Comments on: Yellowstone area griz kills one, mauls several UPDATED

By: Galdera

Galdera — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 06:03:46 +0000

This article great!

For a long time I have done exactly what you warn against. This article was a slap in the face – but a needed one.

That being said, what is the value of an intuitive explanation? Is it to give a lay person an “ah-ha” moment? Is it good to have SOME understanding, even if it is “vague and mush?”

By: CalderaGal

CalderaGal — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:46:41 +0000

I also wonder about the chipped tooth. Bears gnaw on all kinds of hard things – bison skulls, for example. Their teeth DO wear down and maybe the sow had a bad toothache, and that was the trigger. The bear in the other mauling incident I mentioned above was 11 years old and his teeth were quite worn. He had also been drugged repeatedly. The sow in the current story has apparently never been trapped. BUT I think, and so does a photographer friend, that she is the one many people saw all spring with FOUR cubs – one was quite small. People pressured her way too much. She may have just lost it.

By: CalderaGal

CalderaGal — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:38:10 +0000

Thanks for asking what I think they should do. It would be – move all the bears to Central Park in NYC.

Or ship them to Afghanistan….

Or…kill them, stuff them, and sell them on eBay or use them for educational exhibits.

The claws should go to the Crow Nation.

Since they have tasted human flesh, they will try for it again unless they thought it was awful but bears will eat anything. So far, no one has successfully trained a wild bear (train-wild-oxymoron) to stop eating anything.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:33:35 +0000

I find it fascinating that a piece of chipped-off tooth was found at the scene. It is important. If a bear chipped off a bit of tooth every foraging expedition, they’d starve from lack of teeth soon enough. It may well just be a fluke, but it could also indicate something else. (Like something as simple as contact with hard human made object that was not acting like a rock, or like some kind of insane bear behavior.)

By: UPDATED

UPDATED — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:31:48 +0000

ping

By: CalderaGal

CalderaGal — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:31:45 +0000

The tents and campsites were clean BUT my theory: The sow smelled the victim’s stomach contents. This was one of the theories in a fatal mauling I covered many years ago. The man had eaten a steak in West Yellowstone, MT not long before going to sleep in his tent approx. 10 miles northwest of West Yellowstone. I saw the scene and it appeared that the bear had ripped into the man’s stomach. Estimates were that the bear ate 40 pounds of the poor dude.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:29:56 +0000

CalderaGal, thanks for the update. You’ve been covering Griz politics for a while now… what do you think they should do or not do?

By: CalderaGal

CalderaGal — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:25:28 +0000

http://www.islandparknews.com/atf.php?sid=8690&current_edition=2010-07-29

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:56:05 +0000

Cats generally don’t maul their way through the tent. But sometimes I wonder: http://tinyurl.com/2f8spxs

By: mandas

mandas — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:57:25 +0000

Ummm MadScientist, why do you go camping if you are paranoid about bears and cats, don’t like snakes, and aren’t keen on moose and dear?

And no – they definitely should NOT kill the bear and they should all be returned to the wild. It’s their home.