When Man is the Prey: True Stories of Animals Attacking Humans
448
When Man is the Prey: True Stories of Animals Attacking Humans
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Overview
Since we humans have evolved into the dominant species on this planet, we sometimes fail to recognize--and respect--the ever-present threat posed by the animals we love or fear, hunt or fight to protect. Many of nature's most lethal residents have combative skills that have been honed by millions of years of adaptive survival, and it takes only a second for an otherwise evolved individual to become a helpless victim. WHEN MAN IS THE PREY is a one-of-a-kind collection of real-life encounters between man and beast that explores the uneasy relationship that humanity has with its native habitat. From bears, boars, and black dogs to swimming with sharks and dancing with wolves, the stories in WHEN MAN IS THE PREY offer a fascinating, frightening, and enlightening look at the natural world and its many creatures.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429930611 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/27/2007 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Sales rank: | 572,245 |
| File size: | 601 KB |
About the Author
MICHAEL TOUGIAS is the author and coauthor of sixteen books, including two bestselling true-adventure and survival books, Ten Hours Until Dawn: A True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do and Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea.
MICHAEL J. TOUGIAS is a New York Times bestselling author and coauthor of over thirty books for adults and middle readers. His books include Fatal Forecast, The Finest Hours, Overboard!, A Storm Too Soon, So Close to Home, The Waters Between Us, Extreme Survival, and The Power of Positive Fishing. He offers slide presentations and an inspiration program titled “Survival Lessons: Decision Making Under Pressure.” Visit www.michaeltougias.com
Read an Excerpt
When Man is the Prey
True Stories of Animals Attacking Humans
By Michael Tougias
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2007 Tekno BooksAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3061-1
CHAPTER 1
BEARS
by Peter Hathaway Capstick
ON A GEOGRAPHICAL BASIS, it seems to me a fellow would be hard put to find a more widely distributed form of terrestrial omnivore than bears in general. All sharing remarkably similar characteristics beyond such cosmetic considerations as color and size, bears are found in different flavors just about everywhere but in Antarctica, and if the polar bear ever was able to get past the equator, there's little question that the bottom of the earth would not be bearless.
This not being a zoological reference book, I can't believe that the total readership interest in the South American spectacled bear or the Asian sun or black bears would be worth the calories expended to include them, although Lord knows I have the spare calories. So, it is my dearest hope that you don't feel shortchanged by only being violently dissertated to on matters pertinent to grizzlies, browns, polars, blacks and sloth bears, any one of which, believe me, is better encountered in these pages than in its natural habitat unless you have an emerging death wish.
With the possible exception of the great cats, there probably has been more speculation, both correct and otherwise, written about bears than any other animal group. With good reason, too: they're big, scary looking, and they bite. A recently processed pile of still-steaming blueberries encountered in heavy cover has an astonishingly stimulating effect upon the sense of foreboding of just about any hunter, fisherman, hiker or backpacker you can think of. There is probably a case to be made that this natural apprehension is a residual reaction to the days of yore when we started to solve the housing shortage by some very rude treatment of Pleistocene cave bears, whose rocky homes we undoubtedly usurped. The most recent thinking on the matter, incidentally, indicates that the huge cave bear — whose Latin name I am not about to look up — was most likely a pure vegetarian judging by the cusps of its teeth.
Personally, I doubt this idea of fear of bears stemming from the very old days. It just seems common sense to me to be scared motherless of any animal that has the potential for carnage that any full-grown bear does. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not afraid of bears you're doing something wrong.
With the concept firmly in mind that we have to start somewhere, why not begin this horror-fest with the bear the psychoanalysts would have a ball with: Ursus horribilis? Really, now, what sort of behavior would you bloody well expect from an animal named, in formal Latin, no less, the "Horrible Bear"? Perhaps it's one of those chicken-or-the-egg things, but I suppose whether the grizzly is a most terrifying man-eater when so prompted or became such just to live up to his name isn't very important, particularly since he most likely cannot read and understands not a syllable of Latin. Sure, we're kidding around, whistling in the graveyard on our way home through the dark, moonless, bear-filled night. But there have been many times recently when there was nothing funny about spending the night in Montana's Glacier National Park....
The August evening in 1967 was marvelous camping weather although the 60 glaciers and more than 200 lakes in the near 1,600 square miles of Montana wilderness probably had little to do with the coolness. A group of young people were bedded down in an area known as Granite Park, all asleep by midnight. Most probably thought they were having a nightmare when a bloodcurdling scream from 19-year-old Julie Helgerson raped the stillness, the teenager a little way off from the main body of sleepers. In the light of the anemic campfire, she was starkly outlined in the jaws of a tremendous grizzly bear. As she screamed and fought, it appeared for a moment that she might escape as the bear dropped her to severely bite a young man of the group in the legs and back. But, the bear seemed to prefer the more tender Julie and returned to bite her through the body and drag her several hundred feet where, for some unknown reason, he suddenly left the dying girl and ambled off into the night. By the time rangers from the park arrived, she was just a statistic. The young man who was also mauled survived after hospitalization.
It was a very bad night for 19-year-old girls in Glacier National Park. Just a few hours later, at four in the morning and 20 miles away, another group of campers were frightened awake by a grizzly who towered over them, growling like a thunderstorm. Like a flushing covey of quail, girls and boys scampered up trees and scattered into the blackness. All but one. Michele Koons of San Diego experienced the unspeakable terror of the zipper sticking on her sleeping bag! With the bear only feet away, she was bound and trussed by the unyielding nylon skin. The grizzly grabbed her. In numb panic, the rest of the party listened to her describe her own death. "He's tearing my arm off!" was one shriek all agreed upon. "Oh, my God, I'm dead!"
Right she was.
If either of the girls killed that night in 1967 was missing any flesh, the press and my sources did not mention it. I cite the night of terror as a precedent of attack rather than of man-eating, although one must wonder what the bears would have done had they come upon solitary campers and were not disturbed with their kills. The odds against something as rare as fatal grizzly attacks upon two girls the same age, in the same park, 20 miles apart on the same night actually happening have given me a rather eerie feeling when I read the monthly Solunar Tables created and copywrited by my old friend John Alden Knight, which still appear in Field & Stream. These tables are purported to forecast periods of peak feeding activity for fish and game. That night they were pretty accurate.
The two grizzlies were shot and killed, proof of their perfidy having been confirmed by blood samples found on claws and muzzles.
Regarding the new class of man-eater, the "park killer," the bear is the classic North American example of this syndrome. Thirty-six people were mauled in less than 20 years in parks by bears and one more killed in 1972 at Yellowstone by a grizzly. Considering that well over two hundred million people (most are repeats) enter national parks each year, this isn't much of a toll. But, don't forget, not many parks have grizzlies.
It was nine years later that the first substantiated case of man-eating, or, if we carefully note the preferences of the Glacier Park bears, woman-eating occurred. If was another college girl, Mary Pat Mahoney of Highwood, Illinois, a student at the University of Montana. Mary Pat was 22 years old. She would get no older.
Camped with four friends, all female, Mary Pat Mahoney's tent was torn open shortly after dawn, and the girl, still in her sleeping bag, dragged away under the ripping, yellow fangs. Her friends, awakened by Mary Pat's screams of terror and agony, attracted the attention of another camper, who ran to get ranger Fred Reese. Reese arrived a few minutes later where he was joined by another ranger, a Californian on a "busman's holiday" named Stuart Macy. Just outside the shredded tent lay the gore-smeared sleeping bag and nearby, a bloody T-shirt. A clear spoor of blood and drag marks led off into a thicket, the partially-eaten body of what used to be Mary Pat Mahoney was found about 300 yards from the site of her probable death.
Fred Reese, half-gagging at the sight, gave his .357 Magnum revolver to Stuart Macy who agreed to stand guard over the remains in case of the bear's return. Reese went for help. No sooner was he out of sight than a grizzly lumbered up and informed Macy that his presence was not appreciated. To top things off, the .357 was either defective or broken, which might be just as well as I, for one, have no interest whatever in putting any close range handgun bullets into any man-eating grizzlies while standing over their kills. Unless he'd gotten lucky with a brain or spine shot, Macy might well have found himself joining Mary Pat. As it was, the bear was sufficiently nasty and Macy had to climb for his life. His shouts and yells brought armed ranger help, two men with 12-gauge shotguns stuffed with rifled slugs. The first shot floored the bear, but, true to grizzly tradition, it got up and took off. Shortly thereafter, one of the rangers was able to pick out the form of a grizzly's head and blew a big hole in it. As it turned out, there were two bears, probably siblings, and by the human blood identified on both, they undoubtedly shared breakfast with the body of Mary Pat Mahoney.
A Board of Inquiry was already established after the 1967 debacle, but it could not determine that the girls had done anything to provoke the attack. They had even made a point of not bringing any meat on the trip to avoid bears! They wore no perfume and were in no known way provocative. I do not wish to be in any way indelicate, but I wonder, since so many victims have been female, whether the key factor could be menstruation and the detection of such by a bear?
That the problem is not improving, in fact is eroding into rank maneating by grizzlies, was proved three times just in 1980 in good old reliable Glacier National Park. On the night of July 24th (and the age factor is starting to get spooky) a grizzly tore into a tent occupied by a young man and a young woman, both 19, (who may have attracted it by the scent and sound of doing what came naturally, although I do not know their relationship). Employees of McDonald Lake Lodge, the two were killed by the bear and the young lady largely eaten.
In October, it happened again. On the 3rd, the mutilated and partly eaten body of a Texas backpacker was also discovered near his camp at Elizabeth Lake (Glacier Park) close to the Canadian border.
The grizzly is such an impressive carnivore that I am tempted to extoll his qualifications in a literary context where this is perhaps not warranted. He may weigh as much as 1,000 pounds, is in big trouble as the world crushes in around him and is the central figure of some of the greatest legends of the American West. He shares a well-earned reputation with the Cape buffalo and sand dunes in general for talent in the field of lead absorption, a characteristic learned by all on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. When he turns rogue, he's a national migraine. One, sporting the title Old Mose, was at last killed in 1904 after having eaten more than 800 head of cattle and killed five men! That must have been a lot of bear!
Another terror, after years of raiding the sheep in the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah in the 1920's (near the same place where in the winter of 1846-47 the Donner party had been trapped and resorted to cannibalism) was finally killed in 1923 by a sheep rancher and hunter named Frank Clark, who out-foxed the phantom bear with a second or "sucker" trap which sank its teeth into the bear's forearm. After dodging each other through a very nasty night, the bear, christened by the local Mormons as "Old Ephraim," charged Clark, who was armed with only a .25-35 caliber Winchester lever action rifle. (For you gun buffs, this was wrongly called a ".25-.35" in F.M. Young's account of Old Ephraim. It was a nothing" cartridge in modern terms, firing a light 117-grain factory load bullet which has been called by the expert ballistician Frank C. Barnes, "... just about the minimum that should ever be used on deer, and in fact it won't qualify for this purpose in many states.") With the help of his little dog as a distraction, though, Frank Clark, after having twice shot the bear through the heart, stopped Old Ephraim with his last and seventh bullet at six feet, a brain shot in the ear. He was an inch short of ten feet long and held in such respect by the ranchers that he was actually granted a grave and buried, a suitable marker erected on the site:
"HERE LIES OLD EPHRAIM. HE GAVE FRANK CLARK A GOOD SCARE."
You can count on that!
For no particular reason, let's proceed at this point to a perusal of the great bear of the north, the animal sometimes considered the only predator on the North American continent that hunts, kills and eats man as part of his normal prey. A pal of mine who has shot several put it quite well over a few beers the other day when he observed: "Anything on that ice is food for the polar bear. He's at the top of the stack except maybe for the killer whale, and looks at any other animal he can catch as dinner." I suspect he's correct, at least as far as a consideration of the polar bear in an unaltered habitat, shared only with the primitively armed Eskimo is concerned. But, then, with bears, you never know.
My fellow Editor at Outdoor Life, Ben East, makes a very good point in his excellent book, Bears (Outdoor Life, Crown Publishers, New York, 1977) when he reminds his readers that Fred Bear, president of the archery tackle firm of that name and one of the greatest bowhunters of dangerous game in history, killed both grizzly and Kodiak bears without so much as a severe threat of a charge, but the first two polar bears he punctured with his razorhead trademark arrowheads charged Fred and his guide without a second thought. The men were lucky that both bears were able to be stopped at such close range with the guide's rifle, but neither counted as a bowkill because of the firearm interference. Fred Bear did eventually kill a polar bear according to the rules, but he still is convinced that that chap up north with all the yellowish-white hair is unquestionably the most dangerous. That is not an amateur opinion, either.
So far as I can determine, being a tropical bird by persuasion, and claiming no familiarity with the beastie, the polar bear is the one member of the species that is strictly carnivorous, or at least this is the case for the great majority of the time. Whether or not he eats french-fried tundra at certain times of the year doesn't really interest me, but I think it safe to say he'd probably die of starvation chained to a salad bar.
There is no question whatever that both polar bears and Eskimos spend huge parts of their spare time hunting and eating each other, which seems to be a nice, clear-cut relationship in an otherwise muddy world. As the object of some pretty shabby "sportsmanship" I know several people — I shall not dignify them as either gentlemen or sportsmen-hunters — who obtained their polar bears from the gun rest of an ice-cutter's gunwale off the northern Norwegian Islands. My good friend, David Putnam, son of the well-known publisher and stepson of Amelia Earhart, was part of a polar expedition that roped a female and two cubs under identical circumstances, so shooting a white bear in the water from a ship would be sheer murder. These are the same people who have wolf skins obtained on a trapping license and shot from the air with buckshot. Please, do not be tempted to confuse them with legitimate hunters any more than you would lump a jewel thief with a diamond cutter on the basis that they are involved with the same commodity. The use of aircraft in hunting polar bear, although once completely legal, seems outwardly a rather obvious means to an end, yet may not be so. I have not done it and believe it would be unfair to draw any conclusions without tasting the wine. I know too many absolutely ethical people who have hunted in this generally misunderstood mode to believe that it was unsporting. Apparently, the public misconception is that the aircraft is used as a part of the actual hunt itself. From my understanding, it is simply a vehicle to make access to the ice floes possible. A point well considered is the unbesmirched rule of the Boone and Crockett Club, which rules on and records North American game trophies, that the direct use of an aircraft to locate an animal is unethical and any trophy thus obtained will be disqualified as not consistent with the rules of "fair chase."
Well, if you're going to digress, do it properly....
Thalarctos maritimus, whose name I know you were pining to know, is the second biggest of the bears after the Kodiak, which we'll get into in a moment. This position of supreme predator of his world of the Arctic, matched with his physical characteristics as well as the very low population density of people in his range tally up to a most uninhibited and effective general predator. By "general" I mean that man is fair game.
There is, considering how many more seals there are than Eskimos, a pretty reasonable school of thought that bears stalk and eat people because they think they are just another kind of seal. In afterthought, it's a fair notion, in my opinion, because the Arctic aborigines largely dress in sealskin, smear themselves with one form or another of blubber and are about the same size as some of the most populous species of seal. Eskimo hunters commonly, after spotting a polar bear, will lie down in a position a sleeping seal would take to draw the bear into range.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from When Man is the Prey by Michael Tougias. Copyright © 2007 Tekno Books. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,INTRODUCTION,
FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS OF FURY - Bears,
one - BEARS,
two - "COME QUICK! I'M BEING EATEN BY A BEAR!",
three - THREE BEARS RIGHT THERE!,
four - A THOUSAND STITCHES,
five - IN WITHOUT KNOCKING,
six - ONE MAULING WAS PLENTY,
seven - HELL HATH NO FURY ...,
eight - LAST STAND,
nine - MOMENT OF TRUTH,
ten - BLINDSIDED!,
eleven - BUSHWHACKED!,
twelve - ROGUE BEAR ON THE RAMPAGE,
thirteen - TOUGHER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET,
fourteen - PHOTOGRAPHERS AND BEARS,
STALKED BY SILENT DEATH - Lions, Tigers, and Other Big Cats,
fifteen - THE REIGN OF TERROR,
sixteen - TIGERS,
seventeen - THE LAST SHOT COUNTS,
eighteen - LEOPARD REVENGE!,
nineteen - THE CASE OF THE BLACK DOG,
TERROR IN THE WATER - Crocodiles and Sharks,
twenty - CROCODILE BITES OFF ZOO WORKER'S ARM,
twenty-one - BEACH HAVEN: JULY 1, 1916,
twenty-two - ATTACK: CALIFORNIA,
twenty-three - ATTACK AT SEA,
twenty-four - CROCODILE ATTACKS,
twenty-five - SCARFACE: DEATH IN DARK WATERS,
twenty-six - RETURN OF THE MAN-EATERS,
twenty-seven - AUSTRALIA: SALTIES RULE SUPREME,
twenty-eight - TERROR ON THE ZAMBEZI,
THE WORST OF THE REST - Monkeys, Wolves, Pigs, Deer, Hippos, and Other Animal Attacks,
twenty-nine - TWO NIGHTS IN SOUTHERN MEXICO,
thirty - THE KILLER BABOONS OF VLAKFONTEIN,
thirty-one - WOLVES AND HYENAS,
thirty-two - ONE TOUGH TRAPPER,
thirty-three - TEXAS BOAR FEEDING FRENZY,
thirty-four - PIGSTICKING MADE PERSONAL,
thirty-five - TERROR IN THE WILD,
thirty-six - SNAKE ATTACKS,
thirty-seven - WHEN BIG BUCKS TURN BAD,
thirty-eight - DEATH CHARGE,
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