People should know better than to approach large animals.

The first incident in our tale of animal aggression wasn't the fault of the human, but rather just a bit of bad luck, as a testosterone-laden mule deer buck happened to be hanging around her house.

The 67-year-old woman was outside the door of her home in the town of Silver Cliff when she was attacked by a small buck mule deer on Saturday, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in a news release.  The agency said its officers are searching for the animal, which had two spikes on each antler, and will euthanize it if they find it.

The woman sustained a puncture wound to her left leg and significant bruising on the right leg, according to the release. She was able to make it back inside her home and call her husband and was transported to a hospital for treatment.

Well, maybe she does share a little blame, for attracting the deer with bird feed. Deer can be attracted by scattered birdseed, and young bucks during the rut can be fractious (they are kind of like young men in that regard).

We run a couple of bird feeders here in our Susitna Valley homestead, and while we have critters hereabouts that vastly outweigh a Colorado mule deer, we also are experienced with keeping bird feeders in such locations that large animals aren't drawn to them. There are also birdseed blends that won't attract mammals; seed laced with pepper is not only deer- and moose-proof but also repels squirrels, the bane of bird feeders everywhere.

While Colorado mule deer are small and usually give humans a wide berth, larger animals do not always do so. A video from Yellowstone National Park has gone viral, showing yet another tourist (hereabouts "tourist" is often used as a synonym for "knucklehead") approaching much too close to one of North America's few remaining megafauna — a bison.

This kid probably has very little idea how lucky he is to be breathing - and the adult in the video, who you can hear laughing, likewise has very little idea what may well have happened. The American bison (Bison bison) can weigh a ton, can run 35mph, is very agile, able to turn on a dime and hook with those curved horns. And as one of the last remaining megafauna, is just not afraid of humans or much of anything else; a full-grown bison has no natural predators and can be very dangerous when annoyed.

It's easy to write this off as another example of "clueless humans approaching too closely to big animals," but I think there's more to it than that. Not only is our population increasingly urbanized, but our education system badly fails young people in the ins and outs of wildlife and nature in general (add that to a long and comprehensive list of ways in which the education system is failing our young people today.) Not all that long ago a lot more young people grew up on farms or at least had family members who farmed, and spending some time around livestock is a great way to instill some knowledge of how to act around big, thick-skinned, tough critters. Wild animals, while generally avoiding we humans, when they do decide to become aggressive, are often faster and tougher than Uncle Freddy's milk cow.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that many in our state and local governments seem to share the general public's ignorance of how things work, out here in the environment. 

Stay away from large animals!