Girl Phones Mom: The Bear is Eating Me!

Well, i'd like to see you say that when you're confronted by a wild animal.

 

the bear wasn't shot by the person attacked though.

 

i can't wait for the day chickens start going mental

taking their little chicken ak-47's

coming to each of your homes

and unleashing the crazy on your ass for eating their family.

 

I have no idea what you mean by that.

 

Im pretty sure we do kill humans who eat other humans...or at least life in prison

 

Mustlivelife, remember that these are hungry bears who's terratory is being encroached upon, and it was a mother with cubs, to boot.

Good luck driving it off with your fingers in it's eyes. It's just amazing she was conscious. But a bear doesn't need to maul you, one swat and you're out for the count, if she went for it's eyes all that would have happened is it would have put her our of her misery.

 

Yes, I'm well aware of what bears can do. Thing is, bears can be scared off, even in a fight. Dogs and cats are capable of deterring adult bears. The point is that I'd make that last ditch attempt, rather than accept my fate. Going for the eyes is an extremely effective deterrent. Bear in mind that there was already a meaty corpse laying nearby, perhaps the bear would prefer to maul something dead rather than something that will blind it. I know I would. So remember, I'm talking about a bear that had me trapped and was trying to eat me alive, not one that I've spotted and approached in order to gouge its face. And if it results in a mighty smash by a bear paw then at least it was quick, unlike being eaten alive and left for dead.

Bears can smash a pound of flesh right off your bones. They are awesome. Also, they are very afraid of getting injured, because an injury to them can mean death. That's why they do that stand-off thing a lot instead of just getting down and dirty. Also why they are primarily herbivores and why they don't generally hunt larger prey that might fight back.

Yes, in some countries I suppose they probably do. And I'll bet those countries are looked down upon. I would rather sentence the bears to life imprisonment in zoo with a good reputation rather than just shoot them. There was no malice in their actions. Poor bears.

 

At the risk of sounding cold, most of the time when a human is killed by another animal, the human likely deserved it.

In India there's currently a problem with people being killed by elephants and tigers. In order to accommodate the growing population, farmers are spreading their land into elephant and tiger country, and are being attacked and killed out there. The majority of sharks who attack humans do so, not because they like to eat human flesh, but because most attacked are surfers whose boards happen to look like the sillouette of a seal. In northern Canada, many people are being attacked by polar bears because the northern ice is melting and polar bears are heading south into towns in order to find food.

We human beings as a species are fucking up the planet for all its other inhabitants. This means those who we share the planet with are bound to get pissed off and eat a few of us every now and then. Shit happens when you have zero regard for other life forms.

 

well we were talking about the bear who has attacked a person being a lot more likely to attack people again. i'd like to see you defend the same point of view when you run into lets say a bear who has killed before and wasn't put to death. it's a hypothetical situation, i know, but i'd like to see your principles still apply then. it's easy to talk about animal rights and condemn people who hunt them on the internet forums when you yourself have no more than some superficial experience with wildlife.

you think humans are all at fault and wild animals are these precious little things that must be protected at all cost. it's a very naive point of view. real wilderness is ruthless. it's kill or be killed. it doesn't matter how careful you are, how much knowledge or how many years of experience of wilderness you hold, at some point you can still find yourself face to face with a wild animal with its offsprings. and then all your knowledge, it won't help.

it's true, that in this case the bear was killed after it had already committed its atrocities. does that mean we should let it and its cubs (that at a very early age now learned that killing a human being is beneficial to them) stay loose? i think it's justified to kill them in this case, cause it can save a human life. and you propose a zoo as an alternative. a bear who has killed a human will not hesitate to do this again and you propose putting it in the middle of peak human inhabitation, where it can go postal on its feeders or even spectators. you think they keep them in steel cages? let that thing loose in a zoo and it will tear it down. animals who get selected for zoos have to be relatively sedate in the first place. you thinking an animal who has killed at least a couple of humans is a good choice for that goes to show how much you know about wildlife.

 

Does it show how little I know or how much I care?

You dropped the fucking bomb right there - "cause it can save a human life". What's so special about humans, pray tell? Pleasse bear in mind that this HASN'T actually saved a human life, just lessened the possibility of a human being killed, something we can achieve in a vast number of ways, especially with all our technology and ingenuity. I don't understand how you can value a human life over a family of bears' lives. The bear cubs were CHILDREN. Do we imprison the victims of child abuse because they are learning to abuse? No, we don't, even though the majority of child abusers suffered some sort of abuse themselves, ie they learned to abuse children.

What makes a human life more valuable than the family of bears? Last time I checked, bears weren't part of a society that is polluting the globe and waging constant wars, destroying habitats through farming and imprisoning their own species and many other species in some of the cruellest possible ways. Tell me how a human life was worth more than the lives of those bears, please.

Of course I would defend myself, I'd kill the bear if I HAD to, as I would expect anyone to do, showing that you have no idea of my principles. You have branded me as some sort of animal rights nut, eh? I am not that, I am (I like to think) a rational thinker who believes in self defense, even against animals. I have kicked dogs in the face when I thought they were lining me up for a bite, just like I would a human. At no point did I say that these "precious little things must be protected at all costs", you're creating an imaginery me in your head that is quite different from the real me. But yes, I do think these humans in this case were at fault. Bear country and no way to ward off bears? Or not knowing that it is bear country, that's ignorance, apparently something you and I both dislike. If a bear broke into someone's securely locked house and ate a baby, of course I wouldn't blame the baby OR the mother, people walking around in bear country in "cub season" (I don't know what you call it), I will fucking blame those idiots.

How about preparing all the people that would choose to go into wilderness, eh? That would probably solve the problem and nobody and nothing gets hurt. And people would learn in the process, what could be better? People actually using their fucking brains for once, that'd be great! Brains instead of guns, think what a wonderful world we would live in if that were the case.

It's like people in this thread have said, they don't go into bear country without a gun. I respect that decision, as long as they're not shooting the bears for fun or condemning it to death for an "atrocity" that is unacceptable in their eyes.

I can hardly see how you can describe this as an atrocity! Like I said, there was no malice in the bear's action. It wasn't doing this for fun, to get a laugh, to listen to the girl scream!! It was having fucking dinner!!! If that bear having dinner was an atrocity then so is every meat dinner on the planet for humans and animals alike. 911 was an atrocity, NATO bombings are atrocities. Bears eating shit is just nature.

What's the word for attitudes like yours, anthrocentric?

 

every time this thread is bumped my soul dies a little.

 

because i'm a human being and i value human life more than a bear's. which is not to say that i don't care about wildlife. i think a lot of bullshit is done on this planet too. that does unnecessary harm on wild animals. and i don't agree with that. but i don't think this was the case here.

also, for your information, children who suffer abuse are not an analogy for this at all. abuse victims learn NOT to harm anybody through their ordeal. and bear cubs in this case were not abused so i don't see where you pulled that analogy out of. bear cubs in this case learned that human beings are food. which might make them seek out human food in the future which they might not do hadn't this situation happened. that's the difference.

i apologize for that. i did think of you that way, cause your responses seemed to reinforce the naivist approach to wildlife preservation. thanks for clarifying that up.

this is something we both agree on. but even the best wilderness survival class isn't going to tell the bears to make sure they never get close to humans while they're strolling along in the woods. all that can be done is prepare people for such encounters. and that, yes, i think, should be something taught to every kid in high school along with other disciplines. it's a shame that it's not.

it's an atrocity from a human perspective. i know bears were just being bears. however, since eating people is not a norm for a bear, it can't be written off under 'just being bears' either. it was an abnormal situation even for a bear. but you can't well tell them to differentiate who to attack when they feel being in danger and who not to. so in that respect they followed their natural instincts yes.

but you and i will forever disagree on this thing. you think the risk that a wild animal who has killed a human will kill again is worth taking. i think it's not. this is what it essentially comes down to.

 

It was anthropocentric. Most of my attitudes are better described as misanthropic.

We may forever disagree but I am comforted to know that you would support proper preparation for the human population to avoid these sorts of events in the future.

 

This is very sad...... All i do is hope this story ISNT REAL!!

 

I have confronted wildlife multiple times that could have killed me. But guess what? I was the one that put myself out in the woods where there were bears and mountain lions.

If I am killed by a wild animal people had better not kill that animal in revenge for my death. I have already told friends and family that I would not want the animal killed. I will haunt them forever if they do.

 

I agree with your post completely. Thank you.

 

Why did they have to go kill the bears?? They're just animals that don't understand how horrible it is, what they've done..