This Side of the Pond

I’m sure that, by now, you’ve heard the latest story of bizarre behavior in Yellowstone National Park. If these terrible tourists aren’t taunting bison or losing their trousers, they’re apparently finding new ways to prepare a dinner.

Two gentlemen from Idaho and one from Utah are reported to have carried a couple of cooking pots into a remote part of the park, where they put two whole chickens in a burlap sack and dipped them into one of the hot springs.

(No word on why they needed the cooking pots if burlap sacks were sufficient for the task.)

One of them told the judge that the intention was simply to “make dinner,” but I’m not buying it. It’s effort enough to tear the foil off a ready-made entrée, let alone to trek across a national park with a saucepan.

Unsurprisingly, all three have been asked not to come back to Yellowstone any time soon, and they all received fines and some time in jail. Fine examples of American ingenuity these gentlemen are not.

But if it makes you feel any better, you’re far from the only country that boasts idiotic tourists. The continent I hail from has made an artform of it.

Take, for example, the two British tourists who visited Australia in 2012 and came up with a novel idea for a souvenir. All didn’t go to plan, but they sure had some fun along the way.

Not that they can remember that fun, because they were three sheets to the wind before it even got started. This pair of bright sparks broke into a local theme park, set off fireworks, swam with the dolphins and then came up with the brilliant idea to take one of the inhabitants home with them – a penguin called Dirk.

When they woke the next day and realized what they’d done, they did at least have the insight to put him in the shower to keep him hydrated. Their next excellent idea was to get rid of the evidence by releasing Dirk in a canal, which you might recognize as not really his native habitat.

Fortunately, their cleverest idea of all had been to brag to all their friends about what they’d done on Facebook the night before. This led to them being arrested and the poor, shellshocked penguin was taken home.

Following the same theme, a group of teenagers visited Bordeaux in France a couple of years ago and were also arrested for animal-based mischief. In this case, they stole a llama from a circus and took it on a tour of the city’s tram system.

The llama was also returned home safely, in case you were concerned. Oh, and his name was Serge.

Then there’s the Norwegian man who drank too much in Rome on the day he was headed home. He climbed over the check-in desk and passed out on a luggage carousel at the airport.

There he stayed, blissfully sleeping, even when the airport shuddered into action the next morning and the conveyor belt began to move. He apparently traveled quite some distance before a member of staff spotted him on the x-ray machine.

A Finnish man once visited the unique and irreplaceable statues of Easter Island and decided he’d like to go home with the earlobe from one of them as a trophy. I concur with the mayor of the island, who felt that an appropriate punishment would be for the thief to have his own earlobe clipped off.

A French tourist visited New York City in 2014 and was blown away by the glory of the metropolis. So much so that he scaled one of the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge – not for the experience, mind you, but because he thought he’d be able to get the “perfect photo” from the top.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those seaside souvenirs in which layers of colored sand are poured into a glass container, usually in the shape of something relevant to the area. Two French tourists who visited Sardinia apparently hadn’t, because they decided to invent a version of their own.

I can understand wanting to take a tiny piece of paradise home with you, but not when erosion is already a pressing threat to that paradise. I’m also not sure why this duo thought they needed to take a full 90 pounds of Sardinian sand home with them.

And then there’s the hugely embarrassing family of 12 from Britain that spent a month terrorizing the citizens of New Zealand. As they traveled around the country, their various crimes included stealing a Christmas tree from a convenience store, refusing to pay for their restaurant meals, throwing spaghetti around motel rooms and littering beaches with beer and baby wipes.

The New Zealand government was eventually forced to revoke their visas. I’m not sure the UK was particularly excited to welcome them home.

I guess something about leaving the comfort of familiar surrounds tends to disconnect the links between our eyes and the parts of our brains that make good decisions. In some cases, that leads to destruction of property and the loss of historical artifacts, in others it can cause harm to living beings.

On balance, I suppose, we should probably be grateful that the only bad outcome in Yellowstone last week was the loss of two perfectly edible chickens.