Due to congress’s inability to reach a Kumbaya-like stance on Obamacare, recent government shutdowns have sparked a free-for-all within the now human-free confines of Yellowstone National Park.
Sadness settled in late last week, with confirmed reports of an ESA-listed grizzly fornicating with an unnamed raccoon behind an overturned dumpster at the unoccupied Madison Campground.
Furloughed park ranger Sonny McJaggar said, “This kind of salacious activity is normally kept under wraps, when fall tourist season is in bloom. But with no cameras to turn nature’s sins viral, these freaky critters are just way more freaky than usual.”
In addition to bizarre inter-animal relations and ongoing investigations into a massive nut heist between bickering squirrel clans, we’ve learned that Yellowstone’s much-maligned lake trout population will no longer be shipping out for Syrian stillwaters at month’s end as originally planned.
Old Faithful, who oversees cutthroat and laker relations in the park, was unavailable for comment. But will likely erupt in 15 minutes, or an hour—give or take.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.