Welcome to episode two of Get Out Alive. And before we get started today,
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it away. Uh, I'm very excited for this. We have loads of
cash flowing through right now, lots of people shout out today. So we're
gonna start the music, all right. Our first patron of the day Sebastian
Ghazara and music Episode two. Black Bears, Yes, Bears, black bears
beats. I'm gonna tell you how black bears sometimes kill people. So right,
are you gonna go? Bouser a not to go? I know copyright
God forbid Rain Wilson southe us. Yeah, it might be a good way
to meet them. Oh, I would love that. Anyways, this week
we're talking about black bears. This is the species. Like I said in
the previous episode, we have probably the most experience with firsthand, me just
as a biologist who lives in New Hampshire and tells people daily how to not
get attacked by a black bear, or just how to not have their animals
be attacked by black bears, which I'm more than happy to go into later,
but we're going to start with some different stories about bear attacks. Nick,
what experience do you have with black bears. No, we're near as
much as you do. I don't have the scientific background in them, but
I do spend a lot of time outside. I've gone to Yosemite a few
times, where there are black bears everywhere, and you know, like I
am a big fan, so I try to have as much interaction with them
safely as I possibly can. And I've never been attacked, so clearly I'm
doing good. Well. Yeah, and I think an important thing to note
too is your chances of being injured by a injured, not even killed injured
by a black bear are one out of two point one million according to National
Yuik Geographic pretty slim chance that one's even gonna hurt you. Yeah, no,
And I do know that in Yosemite, majority of the bears that get
moved, they get moved from rummering around into trash cans. There they don't
really have any interaction with people, but you know, once they start getting
too comfortable, they start to move them away. Yeah. And according to
bear dot org they are roughly this website, they're roughly eight hundred thousand black
bears in North America and on average, they kill less than one person a
year, according to bear dot org. So do they kill like their leg?
Do they kill? All? Right, well, we're not going to
get into it. Okay, I hate talking about my mouth so or I
hate doing that. What percentage of people do they kill? Just their soul?
A lot of things kill my soul every day. So you're more likely
to be killed by lightning, dogs, or a cow than a black bear
in that order. In that order, lightning kills more people a year than
dogs. Isn't that weird? Yeah? It is definitely is Is that just
in North America? Is that like worldwide? Worldwide? Wow? I believe.
Although yeah, I mean, dogs can kill you through giving you diseases.
Like, we're not going to count that. I know it's ext thing.
Deer kill people because the takes that fall off and kill people. Yeah,
or you hit them with your car. That's all bears are waiting.
No moose, We'll get there. We'll get the moose. So the first
story I have for you today, because the ones I have are like pretty
short, so we might be able to mention a few. The stories I
have are from bear attacks, their causes and avoidance. The book by Steven
Herret pretty straightforward title. So the first story that I have for you today
is a brutal one, and it's the story of carol Anne palm Eranky near
Salt Saint Marie, Michigan on July seventh, nineteen forty eight. She lived
in a cabin with her parents and brother Allan. It was July seventh,
it was a hot day, and Carol Anne was playing outside in the yard
by herself, which is according to her mom, pretty normal. So in
the book, the mother is listed as Missus Arthur Palmeranki, which gave me
pause because I'm like, is her name Arthur? Is that the name of
her husband, and it was like a you know when they introduce people at
weddings as mister and missus his name? Is that all she gets in this
book? I think that's all she gets in this book. That's awful.
It's nineteen forty whatever. Really, that's no excuse to be misogynistic. It
is not, but it's the way it was back then. Well I don't
like it. Can't change history. So was go by Missus Palmerinsky Carol's mom
Carol, Yeah, so anyways, July seventh, nineteen forty eight. I
mean she also, I guess deserves to be that guy's wife whatever, hung
up on. Yeah. So it's two thirty pm and Carol's mom was in
the kitchen with her friend, Missus Merlin Summers, which is a name that
I love. That's a good name. Is Merlin her husband's name or her
name? I don't know, but Merlin's also a pretty cool bird, So
I'm gonna go with that. Her and Missus Merlin Summers were hanging out in
the kitchen about four feet from the back door. Missus Summers was facing the
rear of the room and couldn't see outside, and Alan, their son,
was playing in the basement. And from what I can gather, Carol's mother
could at least see at the window while she was like doing dishes and cleaning
and whatnot, so she you know, had eyes on her at least a
little bit. Her first indication that something was wrong was when she heard Carol
scream. So she immediately runs to the back door, which was open,
but the screen was closed. Looks out and little Carol Anne is I mean,
also, she's three years old. She's three. Little Carol Anne is
kneeling in front of the door and has her hand on the door, and
right behind her, a bear is walking up the porch. It growled,
showed its teeth, and what I'm assuming is in an instant grabbed Carol Anne
in its mouth and pulled her off the porch. It pulled her to the
ground, picked her up by her arm in its mouth and went into the
woods. And at this point, Missus Summers the friend pulls Carol's mother from
the door and shuts it and shuts the inside door. I cannot for the
light. It makes me so angry when I read it, and I feel
bad casting any judgment, but like, don't shut the door, open the
door and go after it. I would agree, but when when you're in
shock like that, you don't. She's more about her own survival. She
doesn't care about the mom, she doesn't care about the daughter. She just
I mean, she's in shock, she's panicking. No whatever. Carol's mom
runs for her husband's pistol, a thirty two to twenty Colt revolver. Nice.
I know, I'm really into revolvers, would love one, but maybe
not to go after a bear. No. She was obviously panicking and couldn't
load it. So she runs to the door, but obviously the bear is
gone and she has no direction of where it went, so she calls the
ranger station and they all gathered up as soon as they can and went to
the woods to look for the bear. And the rest of it's pretty gruesome
if you're of the faint of heart. There's parts that you shouldn't listen to.
But we're only going to ever talk about the bits that are important.
We're not here to like shock anybody or anything. We can assume some of
the worst stuff problem. Yeah, exactly soon after Carol was dragged away,
she also called her husband and they organized the search party, and the party
was headed by Alex van Luvin, another great name who was a former state
trapper, but he was badly recognized as a competent woodsman. So they were,
you know, they felt that they were in good hands trying to track
it down. The next bit is from an account of his taken that day.
Alex van Lubin drives to his home to get his tracker dog Tower.
I don't know what breed Tower is that I want to know everything about him.
Anyways, no one except three men had gone into the woods as searchers,
and he, Alex van Lubin, told them to wait until he got
back with his dog. He gets back with Tower and tells the guys to
stay behind him, and they set out. He traveled west from the cabin,
and you know, since no one could get a peg on where the
bear had gone, and approximately one hundred yards west the cabin, the dog
scented the bear and just started taking off. So they follow the dog for
about sixty yards, and the men were starting to discover blood spots and picked
up one of Carol's shoes, and they noticed in this one spot that the
leaves had been disarranged, and that's when the dog pulled very strongly northwest and
for about one hundred and fifty feet until they discovered Carol's body. She was
face up. She had her head reclining at the base of an oak tree.
Part of her clothing was still there. It was like weird to them
because it was kind of untouched. The clothing. It was like a little
tattered, but like, it's not. The bear ripped her apart, you
know, it completely removed her abdomen and all of her like innerds were gone.
Both of her legs were eaten away to the bone. There was no
blood evidence, and the leg bones were very clean and visible. She had
some deep gashes on her head and neck, but there was little damage to
her face. It was, you know, most of the trauma was to
this abdomen. A short while later, they discovered a one hundred and twenty
five pound black bear and shot it. Now, if you're imagining a bear
big enough to take a child, how big would you assume it would be?
Oh? Three girls, not that big. I wouldn't imagine it's huge.
That's a bear the size of me. That is not a big bear.
No, I don't think a bear would have to be very big to
take a three year old. Yeah, maybe the size of your little pop
Swarer here swears eighty pounds that even that, I think it would be more
than enough to take. He's pure muscle. He's different. They found the
bear that they assumed killed Carol, did the knee cropsy on it and confirmed
that there were bits of Carol inside. And I think the important thing to
mention about why we talked about, you know, the condition her body was
found in is because that's pretty classic for black bears. They'll you know,
take out the intestines and eat those first because that's like nutritionally the best part.
All of it led to it being a black bear kill, which makes
sense. So it wasn't like the bear took her and then I don't know,
somebody murdered her, so it would be even wilder story. That'd be
a very bad day. I mean, it was horrible. Anyways, after
you know, checking up on the bear, they found out it was very
thin, but there was nothing else abnormal, like it wasn't rabbit or anything.
What time of year was this July? He said it was July seventh,
so like the bear should have been fattening up a little. It was
before blueberry season, so it's probably spring. Yeah, so you know their
main food source isn't out yet, so that's when they're pretty desperate. Okay,
I mean, like I said, I don't want to bash the mom
too hard, but it's not hard to deter black bears. So if she
had fought at all, there's a chance she could have stopped Carolyn for being
like fully dragged away. Yeah. I mean, who knows. Carolyne could
have been dead as soon as she hit the ground, so maybe it wouldn't
have stopped her from dying, but it could have stopped her from being hauled
away. Yes, and I'm sure having a child eaten is a little more
than just I would assume, so not a mom, but not a mom,
but I would assume it gets a little more traumatic one. Yeah.
Yeah, and there's not a lot carol Anne could have done differently. She's
not doing it. Yeah. So as an example of how little, well
not how little you need to do to deter a bear, but ways to
save yourself, yeah, ways to use the environment around you to aid you
things. Another story in this book by Stephen Herrero is this ten year old
girl. They don't have a name for her, but it was September first,
nineteen seventy six, and she was attacked and injured by a black bear
in British Columbia, near Williams Lake. A account of the attack says that
this girl was playing by a creek and she was carrying a water bucket up
back to her hut. I don't know where this girl's parents was. Was
she living in the woods? Bear herself? I really don't know. I
hope. I mean, hey, she is killing it. She's bringing a
water bucket up back to her hut, and when she notices a bear approaching
her, a black bear, she drops the bucket and grabs an axe laying
nearby, hits the bear twice, and then starts running for the house.
This bear was like all right, and followed her, swatted her and knocked
her down, but she still managed to reach the door of the cabin.
It tried to follow her inside, but with some quick thinking, she remembered
that she had a pot of boiling water and grabbed it and threw in the
bear's face, and that was enough to get the bear to give up.
Yeah. I mean if I got boiling water on my face, I would
probably run away to Yeah, And you know, she got some broken ribs,
but no one died that day, So that's a wind for everybody.
Your ten year old kick can do it. You came too. Thankfully she
had a pot of boiling water with her. It's a lot of people don't
when they're out in the woods. Yeah, I don't think when you're hiking
you carry a pot of boiling water. I enjoy my tea, so actually
I do have one, you know, a little tea maker in my backpack.
You have a teamaker, a hot yeah, shut your mouth, all
right, but yeah, I mean the point is if a bear is coming
at you fight it with everything that you got. Black bears are historically big
fat babies, So quote me on that flat bears are big fat babies bfbs.
And what you've told me is that they are more known for attacking for
predation than they are for protecting their young. Yes, And I mean we'll
get into we'll get into grizzlies in later episodes. But ninety percent of black
bear attacks, like rough attacks, are predaceous. So that's the main difference
with them and grizzlies is grizzlies, you're way more likely to be attacked because
it's a mother protecting your cub and so it's defensive. But yeah, for
black bears, it's they're trying to eat you. So this is where it
comes in, where when a black bear is attacking you, it wants you
dead. So the whole story of playing dead when you're being attacked by a
bear, do not do that with black bears because they was start eating you
if they you're dead. Well it depends, right, So I mean,
I guess that's why bear biologists don't really use that adage like, oh,
play with a grizzly, not with the black bear, because it really depends.
Like if there's a grizzly that's persistent coming for you and it's like an
adult male, it's not protecting its cubs, it's probably gonna I mean,
it doesn't have to be predaceous. But anyways, it's circumstantial. So like
use context clues. You don't have to be a bear expert or a biologist
to understand when an animal is trying to kill you and when it is uncomfortable
with how close you are to it. So that's kind of the difference.
And you know a lot of people will call me and hey, there's a
mother black bear with cubs I'm worried because I know that I shouldn't get near
them. It's really not the case with black bears. For example, there's
in Stephen's book, there's cases of people trapping black bear cubs and the mom
just like either hangs around the area or is like, okay, you got
them. Sorry now. Yeah, there's not a lot of threat there the
black bear. Not that they're not good moms, but like they just they're
not as you know, aggressive as grizzly moms. Yeah, there's only one
case I could find, according to wide openspaces dot com, between nineteen ninety
seven and twenty seventeen, that was actually caused by a mother bear, and
it was this woman named Glinda Ann Bradley, and she was killed but also
partially consumed in two thousand by a mother bear in her cub in the Great
Smoky Mountain National Park. So it's unclear in that case too, whether it
was initially defensive or if it was predacious from the get go. But I
think it's important in that case to highlight the fact that they did start to
eat her. So it's totally possible the mom bear was like, hey,
uh, maybe we'll just eat this. So yeah, who knows, but
you know, in contrast to grizzlies, black bear attacks are extremely rare in
national parks, and the issue there, like you were saying early on,
is they just become so habituated to people and eating trash and that's when they
become problem bears. But the bears that are eating people are bears that live
not around a lot of people. Yeah, like National Park bear is not
going to they're eating the trash, they're eating all the stuff with the campsites.
They don't need to kill a human for food, and they know that
they're not going to be killed by humans. They know they're not really part
of the food chain there, so they're not worried about a human coming killing
their babies. It's just not really a thing. Yeah, these are bad
examples of bears. Like so for me, like I said, I've been
in Yosemite, I can't really use my experiences there to say, oh,
every black bear in the world is going to be like this. It's just
not logical. Now I've seen black bearries with cubs that are hanging out thirty
feet from people because they're just used to being around people and they're not worried
about it. Exactly. But if I ran too the woods out here and
I see a black bear in a mother like like you said, it's not
gonna be an issue. But I don't imagine they're gonna be as calm as
the other ones were. Yeah, I mean I don't live in like that
role of an area. But yeah, black bears are way more likely to
be habituated to people. And like you were saying about the National Park thing,
I mean, black bears are omnivorous and can eat anything, like they
love berries. They very rarely will actually like hunt things actively and put in
that much ever fruit stuff. So it's not I mean, it's not like
grizzlies where they're like hunting down deer or elk CAFs and you know, fishing
for trout and stuff like that. So black bears don't need to expend the
extra energy to kill us. So why would they. Yeah, A lot
of the issues I have when people call me is you know, I'm sitting
on my porch and this black bear just walked into my yard and I yelled
at it, and it's not doing anything. Can you come remove it?
One? No, we will not do that. No, it's a such
a rare circumstance for a bear to be moved, because you have to remember
so much time and money goes into that. You have to find the right
bear, tranquilize it, have a vet to make sure that it has the
right dosage of that, transport it somewhere where you're assuming it won't be somebody
else's problem, and hope and pray that the bear doesn't just walk right back,
because that is a thing that happened here in New Hampshire. It was
a case in Hanover a few years ago with this bear that they named Mink,
and she was going to be put down because she kept she was a
nuisance and you know, kept killing livestock and stuff like that. And instead
of killing her, the governor, you know, people made us think about
it, and the governor was like, you know what, just move her
up to Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, which is the very tip super rule.
So they move her. What happens next, She's just been going to town
and do the same thing. She walked back all the way back to the
She walked all the way back to Hanover, which is like hundreds of miles
and really impressive. I mean, so think about it, like she knew
where there was a good food source, and she knew what to do,
and she lived out her natural life in Hanover and they just were like,
well, well she's part of the town now. Yeah. Ye, she
since passed away, but she loved to be a very old bear. But
my point in saying that is like, if a bear is coming into your
yard and isn't afraid of you, no one's gonna move it. The point
is you need to harass bears, and specifically black bears. If they're habituated
to people, they don't care that you're yelling at them. You have to
make loud, unexpected noises with airhorns, you know, firing off guns,
things like that, and you have to be persistent. That is the key,
being persistent. It's very easy to live with black bears. And you've
probably been around so many black bears and just never noticed it because they chose
to not bother you. That's just my two cents about it. I could
go on and on and on and on about black bears. Well this is
by way of the podcast, so you can go on and on and on
about black bears, because we have just gone on and on and on between
ourselves and we're like, you know what, more people need to hear it.
The next story is about a woman named Cynthia Doosal Bacon. Come on,
it's a good name. Dousal Bacon, dost hyphen Bacon. Oh,
so which one is her name? Is it Bacon? Well maybe her parents.
Oh that's a thing sometimes nineteen seventy seven, Cynthia Dusal Bacon, You
done? Yeah, all right. It's August of nineteen seventy seven and Cynthia
it's headed to the Yukon tanana uplands of Alaska with five other geologists just to
do some work. And when they do this work, they're in the wilderness,
there is nothing, and they work alone, which probably stopped after this.
But anyways, she hadn't seen a lot of fire activity before. She'd
seen two grizzlies. But like she kind of just you know, did her
thing, got in, got out, and you know, tried to do
her best to remain aware of the bears. She made a lot of noise
when she walked, and you know, that's the thing. We'll talk about
a lot with grizzlies. So on this day, August thirteenth, nineteen seventy
seven, she gets off the helicopter piloted by Ed Spencer, who he'll come
in later. She was descending down a ridge for several hundred yards and you
know, she was moving looking at some rocks and suddenly heard a loud crash
behind her in the bushes. So she turned around just in time to see
a black bear step out of the bush about ten feet away from her.
And initially she thought like, oh, a bear. I better do what's
right, and then realized, oh, it's just a black bear. All
I have to do is make noise, like I don't have to worry about
you know, if it's a grizzly, what do I do? Do I
play dead that kind of thing. She thought she had it in the bag
tried to start scaring it away, so she yelled at it. She was
saying, get out of here, go away, in a very commanding voice,
and the bear just kind of looked at her, and she clapped.
She yelled louder, but the bear just kind of stayed there, staring.
Instead of running away, it began slowly walking towards her, watching her,
and she was waving her arms, clapping, yelling even more, and none
of it was making a difference to this black bear, so she took a
step back and managed to get some elevation on it. But by this time
the bear had reached the trail that she was on, so it looked up
the hill in the direction in which she had come, and then looked back
at her again, almost like, you know, is there anyone behind you?
Nope, okay, And after that the bear darted behind an outcrop and
the next thing she remembers is being hit from behind and she was thrown forward,
landed face down, arms spread out. She remembers playing dead because she
had heard that playing dead would cause an attacking bear to lose interest. But
instead of hearing the bear run away, she felt it pierce into her right
shoulder, biting really deep down, and it started shaking her, like holding
it in her mouth, holding her in its mouth, shaking her. And
after a few minutes of playing dead, she realized, there is no way
that is going to make a difference to this bear. Her next thought was,
Okay, I have a radio in my pack. I can call out
to somebody. Although the bear was attacking her right arm, she still had
her left arm that was free and not damage. She tried to reach out
with her left hand in her backpack to grab her walkie talkie, but realized
that the flap that was like buckled the radio in was preventing her from getting
it out because it was really secure in there. This sudden movement of her
left arm caused the bear to start a whole new flory of attacks, biting
and tearing apart her right arm again. She said she was completely conscious of
her flush being torn, but the sensation was more like numb and horrified rather
than how this hurts. Yeah, she was just in shock, all that
adrenaline going, You're not gonna feel a thing. So she's just thinking,
well, now I'm not going to be able to call for help, and
unless this bear decides to leave me alone, I'm dead, which is really
clear thought for someone who's being mauled by a black bear. After chewing on
her right arm and her right shoulder, it began to bite her head and
tear at her scalp, and she remembers hearing the horrible crunching sound of it
biting into her skull. Then thought this is it, Like this is the
worst way to go, Like I'm being eaten by a bear. Then the
bear clammed its jaws into her and began dragging her by her right arm down
the slope through some brush, which is not great. As we talked about
before, they're dragging you somewhere to keep you, you know, we talked
about Carol's case. It had buried her a little bit and like disturbed some
leaves because it was going to come back. So it pulled her along the
ground over rocks and through brush, which is like so brute, extra brutality
added on to it by the bear. And then once it got her to
a spot that it liked, it walked four feet away, sat down and
just watched her like it was just taking a break. So she was like,
all right, this is my next chance. If I moved slowly enough,
I can probably grab my radio. So her left arm still intact,
she slides it over to where her radio was and was relieved to find that
the latch that was like attaching her radio into her backpack had been broken,
assuming from the bear's claws, so she was able to get the radio out,
use her left hand to her mouth to loudly say into the radio,
ed, this is Cynthia, come quick, I'm being eaten by a bear.
Because she was very aware you're past the attack point. You're in the
process of being eaten. Eaten. She repeated her message, like ed,
I'm just down the hill from where you left me. But by the time
she got to that point, the bear got off its feet, ran over
to her and started tearing apart her left arm. Would just imagine getting that
call with the radio, just like no real quick yours a pilot probably just
chilling in the helicopter. I don't know what you would do back in nineteen
seventy seven, you know, plane, Sudoku or some stuff. Napping,
napping, Yeah, and all of a sudden you have your coworker screaming that
they're being eaten by a bear. So anyways, so the bear starts tearing
apart her left arm and spoiler, when she was found there was literally no
flesh on her left arm between her shoulder and her elbow. At that point,
she was like, well, I did what I can. All I
could do is radio in That's it. She was worried because she hadn't extended
the antenna on her radio, so she wasn't even sure if it was going
to work, if the message was just going to get across, and she
was down a ravine there was a lot of ridges around them, a lot
of brush, so she was like, the odds of them even seeing me
if they fly the helicopter over is pretty slim. So she started screaming at
this point as the bear tore into her left arm and her left shoulder and
it was just gonna eat her no matter what she tried to do. And
then it started tearing at her backpack, which was like relief for her because
it gave her a break, you know, And it was like crunching the
cans in her bag, you just tearing it open, and she thought,
Okay, at least my arms are being given a break. And all she
could think of as she was laying face down on her stomach with her arms
torn apart, with this animal on top of her, was how much that
she wanted to live and wanted to go home to her husband, Charlie,
of only five months, and she said, how tragic it would be to
end it all three days before I turned thirty one. Oh my god,
I know, And she said it was about ten minutes of the bear like
going into her pack and whatnot before she heard the faint helicopter sound the distance
and it started to come closer and seemed to circle her but not passed directly
over her. But then she heard it going away and thought, was it
just a routine pass, like is someone else, you know, being dropped
off or brought to a different area? Did anyone even hear me? And
the bear didn't care it Like her, the helicopter was like, whatever,
I'm still going through this backpack. Do you know what the terrain she's in?
And is she like in a forest really hard to see her? Or
are they on like a yeah, I mean she's in like it's a wooded
area. So even though they saw it, even if she calls them,
like, they don't know the exact spot, like exactly, they just know
the area. So there is flying over hoping to see something of her.
Yeah, you know, as she's having this crisis in her head like oh
my god, did they hear me? Can they see me? She hears
the helicopter coming back, circling and getting close to her, and she's flat
on her face. She can't see anything, like she can't even wave her
arms or anything to get their attention. But this time she was sure she
was to be rescued because they hovered directly over her in a few seconds,
it was silent, no bear. The bear wasn't on her, but she
also couldn't hear the helicopter. They left her again. The helicopter left her
again, but then she also sends like the bear is not next to me
anymore, Like it's quiet. The helicopter's gone, but so is the bear.
And assume that the sound of the helicopter frightened it away. So for
about ten more minutes she sat in silence, and then heard the calicopter coming
again, and it was fast and directly towards her, and in just a
few seconds it was right above her, and she started kicking her legs and
then heard the helicopter move towards the crest of the ridge for what she thought
was like it was landing, and then she heard the engine shut down,
voices people yelling for her, and she started yelling back, but the trees
were thick and she kind of blended in like with the uniform she had on.
But luckily ed the pilot spotted her and called out to two other women
geologists to come help him, and they carried her up the hill to the
backseat of the helicopter. You know, besides the trauma to her arms,
her head was clear, she was breathing good, her insides were all intact,
and she thought to herself, I'll have to do is keep calm and
let the doctors fix me. So anyways, she survived, and long story
short, and after several months of hospitalization, she was able to state quote,
the bites on my head have healed, and my hair is grown back
and covers the scars completely. My right side is covered with my new skin.
My left stump is strong and has good range of motion. Oh my
god, I'm fitted with artificial and I'm ready to resume my interrupted life as
both wife and geologist. It'll be difficult for me to operate a workable arm
on my right side where I have no stump, and to manage the use
of an arm and hook on the other side where I have no elbow.
But with practice, I know that I will eventually be able to make my
prosthetic device and my feet and my mouth do many of the things my hands
did for me before. I plan to continue my job with the US Geological
Survey. Both Charlie and I have loved our work there, and our colleagues
have been tremendously supportive of me throughout the ordeal. I am determined to lead
as normal a life as possible. I know that there are certain limitations I
can't get around having to rely on artificial arms, but I'm certainly going to
do the best I can with all I have left. And that's a lot.
What a gee. So she is the most badass person on the planet,
big old badass, but she's a bob. She is a bob.
I can't imagine being that positive after something like that and just like that clear
headed as you're being maled. Yeah, you know, it's just like,
oh, well, this is what it is, this is happening. Here
are my options yep. I mean you really don't have many at that is.
She did probably everything she could once she's already being attacked, Like yeah,
and I think it's important. You know. The reason I want to
tell this story is because she tried to play dead and this is what happened.
Like, if a black bear is attacking you and it is trying to
eat you and like fighting into you, you fight it back because black bears,
like I was saying earlier, they don't put in that much effort for
their kills. And if you were putting up a lot of a fight and
they think that there's more risk than reward, they're going to bail. Yep.
So just fight as much as you can use what's around you and try
to keep as I mean, I can say this as a person who hasn't
been attacked by a black bear. Try to keep as clear ahead as you
can. Like she did, Like she did, and she got out of
it because she was able to radio think of her options and know that,
you know, even after everything was said and done, technology exists to help
her lead as most of a normal life as possible. It's exactly seventy seven
you said, right, like, Yeah, I can't even really imagine what
the prosthetic world was like back then, but I don't imagine it was very
Yeah, it wasn't very advanced. Yeah. So she's like, oh,
yeah, I got a a mannequin arm. Now we're good. I'll figure
it out. Yeah, like a robot arm. I would also be a
bob in the situation, a big old bitch, and that would would not
have the same reaction. I truly bashed my knee on like a couch,
and I'm like, oh my god, this is the worst pain anyone's ever
felt. As we'll talk about probably every episode your your cat messes you up
and you cry, so, hey, she hasn't done it lately. Sure,
you know insummation scare bears instead of care bears scare bears. I like
this. Yeah, I just want to reiterate how hard it was for us
to even find those stories because of how rare it is for black bears to
attack and try to kill people. I was thinking about that, like it
really is, like you have to go back into the thirties or forties,
but was I even remember, but like we couldn't find attacked. Yeah,
seventies, that same thing, like who cares, it was all back then,
But we couldn't find anything like remotely that violent recently. Like well,
yeah, so there were there's one case in New Hampshire two or three years
ago, but it wasn't a predacious attack. It was a woman left her
door open at night and she had bird seed because she fed all the animals,
and the bear walked into her house in the night, so she heard
it. She was in a wheelchair also, so she rolled out into her
living room. The bear was there. The door was closed behind it,
so it like mauled her. Yeah, I like ripped her face off,
I'm pretty sure. So, like cases like that, it's because the bear
is cornered. A black bear's instinct is to turn and run up a tree,
but if you have it cornered somewhere, it's obviously going to defend itself
like a person would. And in her case, it was obviously a super
unfortunate that she was in a wheelchair, so there's not a lot she could
do to protect herself and like get away. So but that's such a rare
case. And the last case of someone being killed by a black bear in
New Hampshire was in the seventeen hundreds, so clearly. Yeah. And you
know people always call me and say, oh, well, you're not going
to come remove this bear from me, I'm just supposed to let it eat
my children. Well, no, if black bear's eight children, you'd hear
about it. I mean, obviously we talked Carol earlier on, but she
lives somewhere where black bears weren't used to people. The bears that are in
your neighborhood eating out of your bird feeders, which you should take down,
by the way, they don't want to eat your kids. They're just lazy
and trying to eat trash and bird seed. Also, on that note,
it's not fair for you to uproot an animal's life and move it somewhere else,
or to kill an animal simply because you fear it because you don't know
a lot about it. If you are so afraid of black bears or any
other animal that we talk about that you are, it's like stopping you from
living your life. You know, Like people will call me and say,
I haven't gone in my backyard because I'm afraid of black bears, or I
don't sit on my porch anymore. Go to therapy, and I'm not saying
that in a derogatory way. I also go to therapy for different phobias I
have. There's a thing called exposure therapy for a reason. Go look at
pictures of black bears, look up facts about them. You're listening to this
podcast, so that's a start, and then just work your way up.
Go to a zoo, see a black bear. See that they're just oafs
that like to sit around and eat and lay in the sun. Can we
do that, sit and lay in the sun, or look at black bears?
Noe? Yeah we can do all that. But yeah, I mean,
my point is you're afraid of things because you don't understand them, or
you don't have a lot of exposure to them, so go out and get
more exposure. We got rid of predators so long ago, at least in
New Hampshire. I mean, obviously there's like places like Montana where there's grizzlies
and stuff, which we are going to talk about. We don't know how
to act around predators anymore, so our instinct is to be afraid and to
kill it, which is not reasonable at all. There's hundreds of thousands of
black bears in North America, and think of how little you hear about them
attacking people. It just rarely happens. You just have to be they're aware
and realize there's things you can do to not be attacked. And there's ways
that black bears and other animals too. We'll obviously get to it, but
there's ways that black bears tell you to screw off and to leave them alone.
They'll pop their jaw, which you might be like, what does that
sound like? You'll know if it happens, they'll salivate a lot, they'll
pin their ears down. They'll sometimes bluff charge, which like that's the more
dramatic way to show you to f off. But yeah, and there's things
that you can do. So if you're really afraid of encountering a black bear,
which I mean personally, I don't know about you, Nick, I've
never seen one in the woods and I've gone highking. I may have had
one in my backyard like two weeks ago, and I'm still not even half
percent sure why was that. There may have been bear bait in the backyard.
It's a license thing for black bears. If you are really that scared
of them, just carry bear spray with you or pepper spray. You just
need any sort of spray where capsation is the active ingredient and it's the most
useful in stopping unwanted attacks. Also, don't be stupid and keep the bear
spray in your backpack, like if you get charged by a bear, like
you need it on your hip. Your backpack will do you know good,
Just another thing too. Practice with it, practice taking it out, practice
using it. Make sure that when you use it the wind's not blowing back
at your face. They make specific pepper sprays where it's a gel so it
shoots directly out. Those are good. But like I said, black bears,
especially ones that live around people, We'll give you a lot of signs.
It's similar to why rattlesnakes rattle and why skunks have a stripe. It's
to show you to not mess with them, and black bears have their methods
too. But also just leave them alone. Again, chances are they're just
gonna leave you alone anyway, like they don't want to be anywhere near you.
They don't care. Also, and if they do approach you, because
if black bears are super used to people and you're sitting on your porch and
they walk up and they're like, hey, what's for dinner, that's because
people aren't scaring them. Because if people are afraid of them, they'll just
run inside and the bear gets to do what it wants. You have to
harass them. Use air horns. Those are great for scaring black bears.
You have live stock, put an electric fence around it. I know you're
like, Ooh, I don't want to spend the money on electric fencing for
my six chickens. I don't care you bought the chickens. If you're gonna
kill a bear over six chickens, you can afford electric fencing. If you
really care that much about them. It's a great point. Do chickens have
teeth? Do you just ask me if chickens have teeth? Yeah, you
already know the answer to this. Don't make this a thing I have to
do every time. I would love to do this every time. God,
so be aware of bears. Don't approach bears. If you're one of those
people who goes to a national park and you're like, uh, I need
to get a good picture. First of all, no one cares. We
all know what a black bear looks like. You don't need to walk up
to it to get a good picture of it. Invest no lens. Okay,
I don't want to hear it. I just wanted to see the bear
closer. And you're the worst type of person and I hate you for it,
But I love them. That doesn't matter. You can love them from
a distance. If you love them, let them go, okay. Like
imagine being a celebrity and having paparazzi run at you all the time, like
poor Britney Spears. That's what we're doing to black bears. Leave them alone.
Just don't run up to them, take pictures when they're with their babies.
To try to eat lunch. Okay, just be safe, respect the
bear's space. If you don't like people running up and getting into your space,
which I know I don't. We're from New England. We hate being
near people. Bears do too. Just assume every black bear is like a
New Englander and doesn't want you to talk to or look at them. Okay,
all bears are introverts, except for the ones that people have been feeding.
And if you're feeding a bear knowingly, once again, I hate you.
I have a very strong stars on this. No, you're not like
giving any room for like wiggle, You're just straight to hate in them.
Well, because a fed bear is a dead bear. There's a reason that
saying exists. Dude, you have the freaking lines today. You are spitting
fire. Thank you. No, it's because these are phrases people use all
the time because they're true. Like if you have a bird feeder out and
you know that a black bear is coming by and eating out of it,
and you don't care, that's cool for you. But your neighbor down the
road who has chickens or also has bird feeders that they don't want a bear
getting into. It's not gonna stop them from shooting and killing it. I
don't ever want to get super political on this podcast, but there's a lot
of New Hampshire called RSA two seven twenty six which states that you can shoot
any animal that is doing active and substantial damage to your property, which is
super vague for a reason, because if a black bear is getting into your
chickens, legally you can shoot it, and that excuse my French mom,
close your ears is bullshit. You shouldn't be allowed to kill a bear because
you don't know how to protect your chickens or don't know how to take in
a bird feeder. I have a petition to change that law. I say,
is there a change dot org petition anywhere we could visit it? Do?
I will link it below, and I have an emailing our governor like,
hey, I am still mad about this because it happens all the time,
and then bears get orphaned and they have to be sent to the one
guy who can raise them in New Hampshire. Ben kill him. He's a
very famous bear biologist. Please look him up and donate to him, which
I will also link below. Do you have anything else you'd like to say
about black bears? I love them? Great me too level? Is that
our official stance we love black bears. Yes. When we are running for
president in twenty twenty four as a team, our official stance will be we
love black bears right, and that's the one hard stance we will have.
Thank you for listening to episode two of Get It Alive. If you'd like
to see information and the links for this episode, I'll also link to the
book that I referred to. Links will be in the podcast description and also
of course on our website, get out a Live podcast dot com. Once
again, you can always rate us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on whatever app
you're listening to us on. We are trying to get on Google Play that
is the only one, or Google Podcast, whatever the hell it is.
It's the only one that requires us to pay more money to be on it,
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We'll make it happen. Oh yeah, I mean that's all. Yeah,
but yeah, and Patreon. Like I said at the beginning, there's
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it really means the world to us. Merch is coming. So yes,
we are work on merch. I'm actually talking to somebody about yeah yeah,
so stay tuned for that. If you're on our Patreon, you will get
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Nick, do you want to mention your socials? No? And thank you
to my good friend and second great husband, Josh Walsh for making our intro
music. And we'll be back with a new animal attack story on next Wednesday. Assass