"Ms. Green described Mr. McMichael as an experienced farmer who had worked with livestock since his teenage years."

"The land where Mr. McMichael was raising livestock, including cattle and lambs, had been in the family for three generations, Ms. Green said. Plans for the future of the farm remain uncertain, she said. 'Farming was Bradley’s dream,' Ms. Green said. 'He died doing something he loved, and he cared very much for his livestock.'"

From "Oklahoma Farmer Killed by Water Buffaloes He Had Just Bought, Police Say/The farm where Bradley McMichael, 47, died has been in his family for three generations. His fiancée described him as an experienced farmer who had worked with livestock since his teenage years" (NYT).

The expression "He died doing something he loved" has come up a few times on this blog. I'm not sure I've ever discussed it — though I've had long conversations about it in real life — but it comes up in the comments, for example, in the thread accompanying "Indian stuntman dies as he uses only his hair to cross Teesta River" and "Choking to death on pancakes in an amateur pancake eating contest and why the Heimlich maneuver and mechanical suction didn't work."

Looking for those examples, I came across this from a beloved but long-gone commenter:

"'I thought it was a great photo opportunity.' But the shutter-worthy sight quickly turned tragic when one of the bison stepped into a small part of the basin..."

"... then tried hopping out. Within a matter of seconds, the beast began teetering at the edge of the Grand Prismatic Spring — the largest hot spring in the entire park — and then fell in."

From "Bison boils to death in Yellowstone hot spring in front of tourists" (NY Post).

Also in the NY. Post: "A 14-year-old California boy walked off a 120-foot cliff in front of his horrified father — telling him he saw 'snowmen and Kermit the frog' while hallucinating from altitude sickness."

"It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would."

"It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology."

Tweeted Richard Dawkins at 1:26 a.m., and I think that's why "eugenics" is trending on Twitter this morning. He followed up, an hour ago, with this: "For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it."

Here's #eugenics — in case you want to see what people are saying right now. It's a slog to get through all the many people who are saying I see eugenics is trending. I'll just cherry-pick some good substantive stuff (which sounds kind of eugenics-y!):

"The thing about people who believe in eugenics is that they always believe themselves to be the superior kind of human. No-one ever thinks that it could make *people like them* obsolete..." (Joanne Harris).

"I mean, the biggest problem with Richard Dawkins take on eugenics is that he'd probably consider his own traits to be superior and then the world would be full of insufferable assholes" (Nick Jack Pappas).

"While Richard Dawkins is a noted biologist, his science on eugenics is bad. We turned magnificent wolves into pure breed dogs with severe genetic defects causing joint and heart problems and cancer. In fact, many Cavalier spaniels develop mitral valve and neurological disorders"/"Eugenics does not create superior species. We turned mighty buffalo herds roaming the plains into factory farmed cows, the independent stallion into the pony, and the wild boar into the pig. We weaken the gene pool selecting for traits desirable for us but not for the subject" (Eugene Gu MD).

"All of Dawkins’ tweets make more sense if you add '... Mr Bond' at the end of them" (Ned Hartley).

Bison in the news.

1. "Bullet the bison likes to spend her days rolling in the mud, lounging in the shade and walking around the house ... and through the door, and down the hallway. Her owner, Karen Schoeve, doesn’t mind. It can be a nuisance sometimes, but Bullet is house-trained, so long as she doesn’t track mud inside."



2. "Yellowstone euthanizes baby bison that tourists loaded into their car."

Rangers tried to reunite the newborn bison calf with its herd... The efforts failed, and the calf was euthanized because it was abandoned and approaching people and cars....  The two foreign tourists visiting Yellowstone last week tried to “save” the baby bison from the cold by putting the calf in their vehicle and trying to leave. A park visitor told EastIdahoNews.com that she saw the tourists, a father and a son, pull up to a ranger station with the bison in their SUV, the Sacramento Bee reported. “They were demanding to speak with a ranger,” said Karen Richardson. “They were seriously worried that the calf was freezing and dying.”

3. "On [May 9th], President Obama signed legislation honoring the American bison, also known as the buffalo, as this country’s first national mammal."

[Andrew C. Isenberg, author of “The Destruction of the Bison”] cautions against fitting the bison into what he calls a simplistic Christian teleological narrative—a version of the story in which America’s indigenous peoples, with their eco-friendly hunting practices, were tempted by the “unsustainable exploitation” of the Euro-Americans and, together, nearly destroyed the Edenic state of nature. It is misguided, Isenberg argues, to idealize the Indian hunters and white preservationists while demonizing the pioneers and industrialists, all of whom were shaped by their own social and economic pressures, all of whom played their own part in the near-tragedy. There were, of course, significant differences between the various groups—and yet these differences, he writes, “must have seemed trivial to the bison.” Ultimately, the simplest perspective from which to interpret the vicissitudes of the American bison is that of the bison itself. The honor it received this week is meagre compensation for its travails, but it is better than nothing.

Of snakes and bisons, selfies and playing dead.

1. "A Lake Elsinore man could lose his hand after being bitten by a rattlesnake he was holding and taking pictures with.... 'I was going to take it off my neck and do something else with it, but it turned sideways, and it sunk its one tooth into … my hand,' [Alex] Gomez said. 'I was terrified and I said "What a fool. Stupid. He could die,"' his mother Debra Gomez said."

2. "Bleeding and flat on the ground, Chris Baker tried to play dead in hopes the huge bison that had just gored him would lose interest and wander off. The animal sniffed, snorted and stood over Baker before finally trotting off. Baker pulled himself to his feet and staggered along a trail near Tower Peak on Catalina Island, looking for help."

Buffalo in the mist.

Yesterday, in Yellowstone.

Kevin Costner vs. a sculptor who devoted 9 years of her life to making 17 larger-than-life bronze bison/horses/Indians for him.

It's a contracts dispute:

Mr. Costner promised to either build the [$100 million luxury] resort by 2010, place the sculpture in a mutually agreeable location elsewhere, or sell the multimillion-dollar work and split the profit....

Mr. Costner's lawyers argued in court that he met the terms of the 2000 agreement by displaying the work at a $6 million visitor center on part of the land intended for the resort....

To meet Mr. Costner's tight budget, [Peggy Detmers] agreed to do the work for $250,000, one-fourth of what she calls her "wholesale" rate. Mr. Costner confirmed in his testimony that he promised to market copies of the works aggressively in a gallery at the resort....

She worked for $27,000 a year. Obviously, she expected a bigger boost from the project that fizzled. To be fair, Costner's career fizzled too. He was flying high after "Dances With Wolves" — which was what the luxury resort was supposed to be about.

Buying meat and booze in Cincinnati.