excellent article on the grizzly man

[cleofus1]

follow the link and read this excerpt from the novel...

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6869328p-6764794c.html

"Fulton is shaken by his own near scrape, but this is swept away by waves of dread. Maybe it happened this time, maybe he went too far. ... Oh, Jesus ... He taxis out into the center of the lake, turns into the wind, and takes off. Circling over the camp, he can see the tents -- still staked out but mashed flat. And in front of one he sees a large bear, the same one, he figures, feeding on human remains -- a rib cage for certain. But just one body -- someone's still alive down there. He makes pass after pass, 15 or 20, he figures, swooping lower and lower, trying to drive off the bear and looking for other signs of movement. "I just about knocked him off the body, I was so low," Fulton says. "The floats were maybe two or three feet over his head and I couldn't get any lower because of the brush." His voice has the same tone as if he's talking about weather, instead of high-stakes, screw-up-and-die flying. But the bear doesn't budge and, by the last few passes, doesn't even look up. "He just crouched down," Fulton remembers, "and ate faster."

There's no sign of anyone. Still, Tim or Amie -- he's not sure which -- could be hiding somewhere, maybe in one of the tents or out in the brush, maybe even a mile or two away. He taxis to different places on the upper lake, stops the engine, and calls, his voice echoing in the rain-swept silence. Then he takes off, flies to the lower lake and to different places in the bay, stopping and calling again and again. No answer.

Willy Fulton lands, taxis to the west end of the lake, and raises Andrew Airways, back in Kodiak. Operations manager Stan Divine in turn calls the Alaska State Troopers in Kodiak and the National Park Service in King Salmon, which is on the mainland, a hundred miles west of Kaflia, on the far side of the Alaska Peninsula. Ranger Joel Ellis takes the call at 2:35 p.m. Though he's in his first year in Alaska, just completing his first season at Katmai, he's had 20 years of experience as a ranger, including posts at Yellowstone and Grand Teton -- places with grizzlies."

[hlthe2b]

1. what a way to go...

yeesh.... what horror.

[cleofus1]

2. do not read any further if you are easily disturbed

[cleofus1]

3. aw what the heck

snip...
"Gilliland is about halfway around his circle when he finds what's left of Timothy Treadwell -- a head missing most of its scalp; part of a shoulder, some connecting tissue, and two forearms. The face, recognizable and uncrushed, is caught in a grimace. Fulton accompanies Hill down to photograph and collect the remains. Washed by the steady rain, everything is surprisingly bloodless. The wrists and face are pale, like wax. While they're working, Gilliland hears a bear popping its jaws, a clear signal of stress and possible aggression. The animal is close, but the brush is too thick to see anything. Fulton and Hill make their way up the knoll with the body bag, and Gilliland, despite the bear, continues his circling of the knoll. He finds nothing more and returns to the camp.

The others, excavating the cache, have discovered another head with face intact -- Amie seems peacefully asleep -- as well as some flesh-stripped bones, miscellaneous scraps, and portions of a torso.

Describing the remains, Ellis sounds like he's struggling for the right words, something to mitigate the horror. "It was way past the initial stages," he tells me. "One or more bears had time to eat most of two bodies and cache the remains. There was no clothing attached to any part. There wasn't much left of anything. We could not tell male from female." When I ask for more detail, he repeats, "We could not tell male from female." Then he says, after a pause, "One part had a watch on it."

[hlthe2b]

4. What I really can't imagine is their refusing even to keep

pepper spray around... I mean, Treadwell may have been so totally obsessed as to have been in such denial, but wouldn't you think the girlfriend would have wanted to keep SOMETHING around--just in case?

Boy... I think the pilot who found them probably has the worst nightmares from this--given how well he knew them. But, it is nature, after all and this deluded guy was interfering with what is natural.

[Submariner]

5. My work used to take me into the wilderness

around Tok, Gulkana, and Lake Iliamna. It was a bit nerve wracking with the big bears around, but I was confident in the company of Larry Van Daele mentioned in this 'grizzly man' link; http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6869328p-4142019c.html who was the big bear biologist on Kodiak when I worked with him.

One thing he taught me was when I see a fresh steaming pile of bear poop (usually filled with blueberries) walk the other way briskly. Of course we always carried sawed-off 12 gages with rifled-slugs which I was glad not to have had to use. My greatest fear in Alaska was inadvertently walking up on a bear and ending up exactly in the situation grizzly man and his girlfriend got into.

What I remember about Larry was he was fearless about grizzly bears, but when I mentioned the snakes in the lower 48 he got the heebie-jeebies with fear.

[cleofus1]

10. kick

maze of death boost...

[Brewman_Jax]

6. Discovery Channel

ran an article on him last week.

[cleofus1]

7. the rumor is that

there are already a handful of "treadwell wannabees" starting to show up in katmai...hoping perhaps to cash in on the publicity...and maybe get discovery to do a show on them...

[cleofus1]

8. scene from the movie

[cleofus1]

9. for those of you with quicktime

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/grizzly_man/large.html