spectr17
06-09-2002, 01:56 AM
Following All the Rules in a Close Encounter With a Grizzly
By BLAINE HARDEN, new York Times
6/2/02
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2002/06/02/national/02griz.184.jpg
Abigail Thomas squirted a bear with water to make him let go of her leg. Pic taken by Lynn Donaldson for The New York Times
As the grizzly approached, taking his sweet time, Abigail Thomas tried to practice good bear etiquette.
She stood still as a tree in her dark gray jogging outfit. She did not look the bear in the eye. She silently told herself, as she later recalled, that if the bear did not feel challenged, he would "leave me alone."
The bear, though, had other ideas.
So it was that last Sunday morning on a parking lot in Yellowstone National Park, Ms. Thomas had a moist and terrifying encounter with a grizzly. The five-minute face-off became painful, she explained in a telephone interview, only after the grizzly released the grip of his jaws, which he had gently clamped on her right thigh.
It was the first time in two years that a grizzly had injured a person in Yellowstone, a park that is home to 400 to 600 grizzlies and is visited by three million people a year. Marsha Karle, a spokeswoman for the park, said there are very few contacts between bears and people considering the number of people and the number of bears. If startled, separated from their cubs or hurt, grizzlies can attack and kill humans. In Yellowstone, three people were slightly injured by a grizzly in 2000. Grizzlies have killed five people in the park in the last century, with the most recent death in 1986. Across North America a person is killed by a grizzly about once every two years.
In the Rocky Mountain West, the probability of contact between people and grizzlies is rising. An increasing human population is settling in areas where there is a recovering population of grizzlies.
Lecturers from the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula, Mont., offer the following advice for anyone encountering a bear: avoid eye contact and sudden movement — and never run. That is the gospel that Ms. Thomas tried to follow.
Ms. Thomas, 30, is a mail sorter in the Lake Station Post Office in Yellowstone. She is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. She has been a veterinary technician in Portland, Ore., and loves animals. Her professional expertise is limited to dogs and cats.
The grizzly she encountered is a "male subadult grizzly," the National Park Service said. He is about 3 years old and probably separated from his mother in the spring. Based on his age, the bear is about half the size of an adult male and weighs 225 to 250 pounds. Grizzlies at this age are often playful and sometimes insecure because they are away from their mothers for the first time.
When he approached Ms. Thomas, he sniffed her right leg. Then he sniffed her hands, which she, in her effort to impersonate a tree, was pressing against her legs. She tried to talk to him. "Hey, bear," she said, in a normal voice, "leave me alone." She drew up her fingers so he would not bite them.
"I wasn't afraid so much he was going to kill me," Ms. Thomas said, "as I was worried that he was going to mouth me."
Then, he mouthed her.
"He opened his mouth and he put it around the front portion of my thigh muscle on the right side," she said. Then he drew back his head and scraped her skin with his teeth, which did not draw blood through Ms. Thomas's jogging pants, but it hurt and scared her.
She yelled, "Leave me alone!"
The grizzly kept sniffing her. Ms. Thomas remembers thinking that if he mouthed her again, drawing blood, then he might become more aggressive. She decided to play offense. Slowly, she reached for a water bottle that she carried around her neck.
"He didn't seem impressed by me talking or yelling at him, so that is when I squirted him," she said.
The startled bear walked slowly away. More frightened than injured, Ms. Thomas went to a clinic for an examination, which found bruises on her right leg. She had recovered enough by Tuesday, she said, to go jogging — in an area of Yellowstone with no bears.
By BLAINE HARDEN, new York Times
6/2/02
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2002/06/02/national/02griz.184.jpg
Abigail Thomas squirted a bear with water to make him let go of her leg. Pic taken by Lynn Donaldson for The New York Times
As the grizzly approached, taking his sweet time, Abigail Thomas tried to practice good bear etiquette.
She stood still as a tree in her dark gray jogging outfit. She did not look the bear in the eye. She silently told herself, as she later recalled, that if the bear did not feel challenged, he would "leave me alone."
The bear, though, had other ideas.
So it was that last Sunday morning on a parking lot in Yellowstone National Park, Ms. Thomas had a moist and terrifying encounter with a grizzly. The five-minute face-off became painful, she explained in a telephone interview, only after the grizzly released the grip of his jaws, which he had gently clamped on her right thigh.
It was the first time in two years that a grizzly had injured a person in Yellowstone, a park that is home to 400 to 600 grizzlies and is visited by three million people a year. Marsha Karle, a spokeswoman for the park, said there are very few contacts between bears and people considering the number of people and the number of bears. If startled, separated from their cubs or hurt, grizzlies can attack and kill humans. In Yellowstone, three people were slightly injured by a grizzly in 2000. Grizzlies have killed five people in the park in the last century, with the most recent death in 1986. Across North America a person is killed by a grizzly about once every two years.
In the Rocky Mountain West, the probability of contact between people and grizzlies is rising. An increasing human population is settling in areas where there is a recovering population of grizzlies.
Lecturers from the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula, Mont., offer the following advice for anyone encountering a bear: avoid eye contact and sudden movement — and never run. That is the gospel that Ms. Thomas tried to follow.
Ms. Thomas, 30, is a mail sorter in the Lake Station Post Office in Yellowstone. She is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. She has been a veterinary technician in Portland, Ore., and loves animals. Her professional expertise is limited to dogs and cats.
The grizzly she encountered is a "male subadult grizzly," the National Park Service said. He is about 3 years old and probably separated from his mother in the spring. Based on his age, the bear is about half the size of an adult male and weighs 225 to 250 pounds. Grizzlies at this age are often playful and sometimes insecure because they are away from their mothers for the first time.
When he approached Ms. Thomas, he sniffed her right leg. Then he sniffed her hands, which she, in her effort to impersonate a tree, was pressing against her legs. She tried to talk to him. "Hey, bear," she said, in a normal voice, "leave me alone." She drew up her fingers so he would not bite them.
"I wasn't afraid so much he was going to kill me," Ms. Thomas said, "as I was worried that he was going to mouth me."
Then, he mouthed her.
"He opened his mouth and he put it around the front portion of my thigh muscle on the right side," she said. Then he drew back his head and scraped her skin with his teeth, which did not draw blood through Ms. Thomas's jogging pants, but it hurt and scared her.
She yelled, "Leave me alone!"
The grizzly kept sniffing her. Ms. Thomas remembers thinking that if he mouthed her again, drawing blood, then he might become more aggressive. She decided to play offense. Slowly, she reached for a water bottle that she carried around her neck.
"He didn't seem impressed by me talking or yelling at him, so that is when I squirted him," she said.
The startled bear walked slowly away. More frightened than injured, Ms. Thomas went to a clinic for an examination, which found bruises on her right leg. She had recovered enough by Tuesday, she said, to go jogging — in an area of Yellowstone with no bears.