October 4, 2010 | Lists
When a tiger nearly made an “uno” out of the duo Siegfried & Roy, the effete conjurer Siegfried did not heed this clear warning that wild animals do not belong in the world of men in sequined jumpsuits, but rather insisted that the tiger that mauled his sidekick was “protecting rather than attacking him”.
A similarly baffling disconnect from reality guided the life of the sad lunatic Timothy Treadwell, subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man”, who took Winnie The Pooh as cinema verité and decided to spend his summers among grizzly bears. He didn’t survive his final trip, because, having been lulled into a false sense of security by previous trips when bears had not packed their lunchboxes with his innards, he didn’t bring along the arsenal that we would assume mandatory for such a camp-out: a portable drum of bear spray, sticks of dynamite to light and throw behind you when a bear doesn’t buy your “play dead” routine, a tank etc.
Yes, it’s safe to say, especially from the comfort of our computer screens, that bears, especially the non-anthropomorphic variety that are mum on the subject of park safety— can compromise yours. Here we present 7 Weird Bear Attacks.
7. Woman Thwarts Bear with Zucchini.
Not until someone greenlights a boring, Vegan spin-off of Iron Chef will the thwarting powers of zucchini be so apparent.
One woman and her dog, west of Missoula were attacked by a 200 lb black bear and when the bear then turned back to the dog a second time, maybe to supplement its flexitarian diet, the owner was able to fend off the assault by lunging for and flinging a vegetable she had just harvested. It’s a good thing it wasn’t peas.
6. Bear Attacks Jersey Man for his Hoagie.
Not since Tony Soprano, has something well over 200 lbs, hairy and hulking terrorized the Garden State.
A hungry black bear attacked a Jersey man in his own driveway and then stole his hoagie.
The victim told the Star-Ledger: “I’m still hurting pretty badly. My face is all messed up. It looks like I’ve been in a boxing match.”
During the Great Depression, it was not uncommon to shed ring rust by boxing a kangaroo. Recently, an Aussie out jogging found out just how dangerous a boxing kangaroo can be.
[Editor's note: For those of you interested in Woody Allen boxing a kangaroo, which we can only assume to be "all of you", here it is]
5. Woman Beats Bear Bare-handed.
A 53 year-old woman from a Siberian village was set upon a 400 lb-plus bear and repulsed the attack. “The bear, scared of the woman’s strength (our italics), fled into the forest.” [Editor's note: the above, however benign, is one of the examples of what can happen when you don't have a free press]
“I delivered several blows to its muzzle. It then just growled and ran away into the forest…”
4. Finn the Bear Mauls Intruder.
We dubbed one of the stories in our compendium of blue-ribbon drunks, “Bear-ly Legal”.
In it, a wasted Ukrainian who thought himself so strong that no human could best him, decided to seek out suitable competition in the bear cage of his local zoo – only alert zookeepers kept him from a Treadwell-ian-like fate.
Similarly, at a zoo in Berne Switzerland, a man jumped into a bear enclosure after perching on a 20ft wall for about ten minutes. This intrusion upset one of the occupants—the kind of upset that animals of that species tend to externalize by mauling to death the intruder. The next time you open the door on two lovers at a party, thinking it’s the bathroom, just think of how much worse it could’ve been.
A British visitor who witnessed the attack said: “I looked in after I heard people screaming. “The bear was standing over him and throwing him back and forth.” Luckily for the intruder, he survived this ursine tennis match.
3. Polar Bear Punch.
With the globe heating up and several polar beings being set off on that great ice floe journey from which there is no return, we are hoping that this trend is reversed and future bouts sanctioned.
A 67-year-old man says he survived a polar bear attack in Nunavut by punching the bear in the face, a tactic he learned from an Inuit elder.
The man, a longtime wilderness consultant, said the attack occurred where he was training three Inuit hunters to be eco-tour guides.
“He spun and gave him a back fist with … the snow knife handle and hit him right on the nose, and the bear ran off”.
The spinning back-fist has proven largely ineffective against human opposition, with few exceptions notably one that took out Matt Serra in the UFC. [Please see our 20 Fighting Tips---but be forewarned, none of these include techniques on how to lay out any kind of large, aggressive mammal that is not human]
An eastern Oregon rancher documented a fight between cattle and a black bear. The cow’s buddies, like in a human drunken bar brawl, jumped in and the bear, who wildlife officials say might have just been passing through, got his hindquarters soundly kicked by the ruminants.
1. Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick.
A man out walking with his two dogs in the BC interior, came face to face with an angry mother bear.
According to sources, the bear knocked him to the ground, and “She tore into my skull at the back of my head, moved over and bit me on the left side of my body, on my ribs and left arm.”
“I turned [when] I heard a grunt. All I saw was eyes full of hatred … I had no option … So I stuck my foot up and tried to kick her in the face,” he said.
The injured man managed to get to his feet and picked up a stick about as thick as his arm and crushed the bear’s skull.
