The 50th State’s Golden Touch

July 08, 2009

Filed in: North Dakota

Not to brag, but being a 50th State state (AK, HI, ND or KS) elevates you to a status in the national media you’d otherwise never achieve.

Just consider: mere weeks after we visited Alaska, its otherwise little known Governor burst upon the national stage. I don’t need to tell you which Hawaiian-born world leader is now in the news every day. Kansas has its anti-abortion cold-blooded murderers making headlines, and how proud they must be of that.

And now, a week to the day after we ourselves trekked in the Badlands, here’s an article on the overpopulation of elk there and the state’s struggle to control it.

I kid, of course – the elk story was in the Bismarck newspaper 3 of the 6 days we were in ND. It’s not new news there.

Weirdly, even though the park is supposedly overrun with elk, it’s very difficult to actually get a glimpse of any. They’re apparently very shy, and the park is huge, and the loop road or even hiking trails only traverse a tiny bit of it. So the little buggers (they’re smaller than you’d think, not any bigger than a deer) can hide out quite well. And overpopulate in peace.