I can't believe people, # 596

Georg  Carlin used to do a bit where he would come up with sentences that had never been said before by anyone anywhere. Samples: "Dad, you really ought to drink more."  And, "Hand me that piano."

We can now add to the list: "Let's boil chickens in Yellowstone's hot springs!"

Turns out, it's against the law to do that. Three guys found that out recently after being nabbed by park rangers, boiling a hen for dinner. They are banned from national parks for the next two years and paid fines of $500 and $1200.

A man named Lee Whittlesey is a retired historian of Yellowstone stuff and he says this human folly surprised him. He says these two "cooked their own goose." 

And then he notches up the humor a bit and says they had "run a fowl of the law."

I like this man and the way he speaks. He was talking to the Guardian newspaper and reminisced about the way a tourist recently got too close to a bison while snapping a selfie with the giant beast, only to be thrown a few yards, and the time someone's drone crash landed in a hot spring.

It was August 7 of this crazy cursed year when some people spent the day canoeing and hiking in the Shoshone Geyser Basin. It didn't take long before people were showing up at the rangers' office to report that cooking was taking place in the basin.

Responding to the report, a ranger found that the men had wrapped two chickens in burlap sacks and dunked them in one of the basin’s many geothermally heated springs for dinner. The ranger went back to the office to try to comprehend all this, returning the next day to hand out citations.

According to park officials, Eric Romriell and Eric Roberts, both from Idaho, and Dallas Roberts of Utah, broke the laws that are meant to protect the park and its visitors from idiots who don't know the difference between a hot spring and a Kenmore range.  It is illegal to roam away from officially designated trails to get to the hydrothermal parts of the park, and anyone with a grain of sense knows better than dunk a fryer in the hot waters.

Eric Romriell claims he had no intention of being destructive. Why, he even double bagged the chickens so as not to contaminate the hot spring waters!  “I don’t intend to be a naughty person,” Romriell told the New York Times. “I don’t intend to be a troublemaker.”

Roberts told the Times that he and his fellow jolly wanderers “definitely have respect for Yellowstone," although he did not specify his stance on "naughtiness."

"We have respect for the outdoors, and would never do anything in any way to contaminate that or to cause problems for others,” Roberts stated.

And Romriell revealed that they all enjoyed the chickens for dinner after the ranger left. His review: "It was fantastic!"

Pass the hot sauce!