I live in bear and wolf country. And coyotes. And mountain lions. And some other critters that'll gnaw on you if you give them a chance.

If you're not stupid there's very little problem. If you do stupid things, like storing your food and garbage in the same tent you're sleeping in or deciding that the grizzly cub should be petted, well, the gene pool gets a little deeper with your getting out of it.

Take them folks who think that they can live and love with the grizzlies. Well, they might, but in the long run I'm betting on the humans being the blue plate special. And I see no reason why we should kill an animal that acts in accordance with its nature when WE did the stupid thing.

Now, I don't like the idea of "garbage dump bears" or messing with their natural food sources because they can become dependent on human's "largesse." If a lion takes a cow, well, to the lion it's just "slow elk" and yes, it can mean not covering the mortgage to the farmer or rancher. Gotta balance it out.

So: I propose that we feed tourists to the animals, but only tourists who are stupid enough to hike the backcountry in shorts and flip-flops in June, who can't tell the difference between reality and television shows, and who think baby animals are just cuddly-wuddly cute little balls of fursy-wursy yes um is!.