an interesting question man versus bear

[cleofus1]

personally i think the bear would have kicked his ass...



Bruin's burglary unsettles residents
http://www.adn.com/front/story/6661781p-6548612c.html

"Maybe the black bear visiting an Anchorage Hillside home Tuesday afternoon didn't slurp any porridge or nap in any beds. But the wayward bruin did rip a couch, tear window screens, bust a planter, sample sandwich rolls and lay a great, ripe pile on the living room's polished oak floor."

"Tyler Saupe, a 2002 East High School graduate on summer break from college, returned about 6 p.m. from a shift on a framing crew. After he saw the poop, he dashed downstairs to his bedroom and armed himself with a short medieval sword and a curved dagger, both hanging on his wall as collector's items."


"I definitely would have done something," he said. "He's definitely a bear, but I'm a 190-pound 21-year-old. It would have been interesting who would have gotten the best of the other. I definitely would have stood a chance."

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Yeah.

Black bears tend not to be aggressive towards humans, usually. But being attacked with a short sword (wtf?) woud have probably pissed it off considerably...and a 300+ pound bear vs a 190-pound man is probably going to result in serious hurt for the man (unless he has a gun).

[cleofus1]

2. well

an elderly couple just got killed by a grizzly last weekend...and up here black bears have eaten a couple of poor souls in the last few years...so a local alaskan may not feel that bear are so cordial...

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Eh...

well, the bears probably don't think humans are so cordial, either...after all, it's the bears having their habitat invaded and their range restricted. That's kind of like going to the Indian jungle and complaining because you get attacked by a tiger.

[cleofus1]

6. animals are people too...

well sorry i just assumed man was part of the biosphere and not just an interloper...

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. Part of the biosphere, sure...

but there really weren't many humans in that part of the world till fairly recently...and unlike other animals, the human population has expanded free of natural constraints, thanks to modern agriculture and a number of other factors. Humanity has become more of a virus than a mammalian species, in some ways...our technology has effectively placed us outside the natural order of things.

[cleofus1]

8. please don't fall into the trap

eskimos and other human types have been up here for millenium...villages still persist on the frontiers and outskirts of white mans civilization...we here are not apart from nature we are a part of nature...i love ya spider...and if you want to look at you and yours as a viri that's fine...but my people still look at ourselves as children of the earth...

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Sure...

but were any native villages the size of, say, Anchorage? Fairbanks? Juneau? Far fewer people, in generally a much smaller area...

[cleofus1]

10. you make it sound like alaska was an empty wasteland

anthropologists may disagree with you on that...

natives have lived in all areas of alaska...maintaining sustainable and viable populations from point barrow to the yukon...from denali to cook inlet...all across the state in all livable or even remotely livable sites...

ok maybe not hundreds of thousands at one time...but enough to color a map...

[cleofus1]

3. here's the grizzly story

"Two people camping along the Hulahula River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were killed by a grizzly bear, officials said Sunday.

Officials discovered the bodies and an unused firearm in a tent at a campsite near the river.

The couple, whose names were not released, were believed to be in their late 50s or early 60s, North Slope Borough police said. They were from Anchorage and had been on a recreational rafting trip down the river, Alaska State Troopers said."
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6652474p-6539228c.html

[cleofus1]

4. delete

nt