First, the article points out that it costs somewhere between $40,000 and $70,000 dollars to equip yourself and to make the arrangements to climb Mt. Everest, so there is a lot of money involved.

You hear stories about the trusty Sherpas who make that climb possible–Tenzing and all that.

But authorities have discovered a scam in which some guides have been dosing the food of climbers with baking soda, the climbers get severe gastrointestinal distress, and in the high pressure and very dangerous environment of the climb, the guides pressure them to call for very costly medical evacuation by helicopter.

According to the linked report authorities have found that this scam involves not only some guides but also that some helicopter companies are in on it, and the hospitals they are flown to are also in on it, the payout to all these scammers coming from the travel insurance companies which are billed for the emergency evacuation and treatment.

So far, authorities say they’ve found almost $20 million dollars paid out in the scam.*

So I guess the lesson here is that no mater where you go–you can climb the highest mountain–and you still can’t escape evil, or should I say “human nature.”

* See https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/04/01/i-did-not-have-everest-guides-poisoning-climbers-on-my-bingo-card-n3813495?

Part of the problem is YouTube. YouTube will show you the one-in-a-million pet otter or beaver or raccoon or what have you and will only show the golden moments of such pets, and gives a false impression of what the typical experience is like.

— Niketas Choniates

YouTube certainly contributes. But so do TV and movies.

For ex, most of the cute, adorable chimpanzees we’ve seen on TV and movies over the decades (my favorite example is the old BJ and the Bear, TV show, which dates me) are young. In fact, IIRC there is a general rule that ‘actor’ chimps have to be 5 or less. Partly that’s for the good of the chimp, but it’s also true that adult chimps are a good deal less cute, and a great deal more dangerous and hard to manage than the young ones.

This leads to tragic outcomes sometimes when people adopt a baby chimp, legally or not, and don’t allow for managing it when it’s an adult, substantially stronger than a human, and aggressive. Even if they stay friendly with their owners (and they often but not always do) they can become dangerous to everyone else around them. Plus, even if the chimp has no aggressive intent, an adult chimp is powerful. They can easily injure a human without even intending to.

And when chimps do get aggressive, they mean it. They go for the face and the genitals, they try to maim.

A: This is a cute young chimp a year or two old: https://friendsofanimals.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/toto3-600×559.png

B: This is an annoyed adult male chimp: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQCHhKY3JRLe5LQDR3j5klFLgv4d8fPfGIMuQ&s

The problem is that A turns into B in the natural course of time. Sometimes the result is tragic for a human, like that woman whose face was ripped off by her friend’s ‘pet’ chimp. Sometimes it’s tragic for the chimp, because they can become too big to manage and too expensive to care for, a human raised chimp can’t be released to the wild, zoos are full, often they end up having to be killed or end up as experimental stock.

But they’re so cute and adorable! People fall into the bad habit of thinking of pets as their children, and forget that animals grow up. That can cause problems even with dogs and cats if owners are naive, it’s much worse with wild-ish animals that haven’t been bred for human company.

I loathe the phrase ‘pet parent’ for just that reason.

Plus we should acknowledge that some people own and relate to other (typically domesticated farm) animals with such affection as to be close to the relationship dog owners have with their pets.

According to Temple Grandin, the autistic animal savant, human bonding is so huge for dogs, that we are now a dog’s environment, not the natural world.

Dogs can survive on their own, but they have evolved to live with humans. I would venture to say that a dog can’t really thrive without a human relationship.

It’s a humbling thought.

(I assume wishing one a happy Good Friday may not be in the best of taste…)

Now that you mention it, RTF has been AWOL for a month it seems.

IrishOtter49,
To paraphrase Ben Franklin;
Dogs are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.