Posted on 10/14/2005 5:38:07 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
I'd always thought "Shark Expert" Dr Erich Ritter took the cake. Last year in the Bahamas, "Dr Ritter (P.H.D. in "Behavioral Ecology,") was developing in his own words a "body-language" system to "build a bridge to sharks, to interact safely among them. To show there really is nothing to worry about, because sharks are not mindless monsters."
While neck-deep in this noble project (literally, and with Discovery Channel's cameras rolling) a Bull shark rushed in, chomped down and interacted with the good Doctor's leg big time. He ripped it half off and Dr Ritter went into shock from blood loss.
Comes now the movie, "Grizzly Man," the tragic story of "Bear Expert" Timothy Treadwell, the toast of 'glitteratti on both coasts, a favored guest of Letterman and Rosie, a Discovery Channel regular, a friend and soulmate of Leo Di Caprio. "Common sense will tell you that this man knows infinitely more about Grizzly bears than anyone." That's Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown), also active in the late Treadwell's animal rightist group named "Grizzly People," headquartered in Malibu.
Timothy Treadwell was big on "interacting" with animal's too. But he cuddled with Alaska's Grizzly and Brown Bears (same species), indeed he serenaded them. "I want to be unconditional love and kindness to them," he sighed to a mesmerized David Letterman. "I want to live with them and go with them and not carry something that will hurt them. I mastered a way of interacting with them with body language that enables me to be in extremely close contact with them. Grizzly bears are really just big party animals. I discovered that singing soothes these bears."
Treadwell spent much time interacting with Brown bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park with his cameras and lovesongs. These bears are 1200 pound monstrosities. Their teeth and claws weren't meant for hors d ouvres much less caressing, and no amount of Mariah Carey and Barry White, or even Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson lyrics will change that.
When the bush pilot dropped in to pick up Treadwell and his girlfriend from their remote campsite in October 2003, he found a party animal indeed--a dinner party animal! A huge brown bear was sitting atop some mangled human bodies and still munching away. Apparently he'd put his predatory equipment to work big time, stalking, rushing in, then eating both Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, right down to their Birkenstock hiking boots and Ying-Yang pendants.
"Whoops!--Yikes!" The pilot skedadelled and called the park Rangers who got there posthaste and heavily armed. No sooner had they arrived when a huge bear charged from the brush. None of that rising up on the hind legs bit. None of that growling bit.
That's for bluff. And like Hemingway tells us in Death in The Afternoon, "an animal bluffs in order to avoid combat." This brute meant business. He was mum, his beady eyes focused on another meal and his legs pumping furiously.
Amazingly, the bug-eyed Rangers refrained from crooning Lionel Ritchie's and Diana Ross' Endless Love. Call them pathetic yahoos, you Grizzly People, but no Karen Carpenter or even Celine Dion lyrics passed through their heads. Olivia Newton John's "I Honestly Love You," wasn't even considered. Elton John lyrics were nowhere to be heard, not even "Your Song" or "Can You Feel The Love Tonight."
The Rangers had their magnums do the singing: BLAM!-BLAM!-BLAM! Twelve ear-splitting notes later the charging bear finally crumpled and skidded to a stop.
Still shaking and with parched mouths, the Rangers paced the distance to the bleeding behemoth and it came to 12 feet. "That was cutting it close," one gasped. The bear's autopsy showed most of Timothy Treadwell in his stomach.
Minutes later the Rangers noticed another bear stalking them through the brush. Call them hopeless yokels, David Letterman and Rosie, but nary a line from either Roberta Flack, Carole King or even Enya came to mind. Both Minnie Riperton and Barry Manilow were ignored completely. If any lyrics entered their minds they were Gloria Gaynor's, "I Will Survive!"
The magnums sang again. They rangers opened up with everything they had. These rangers knew these Bears respond to only one song: "Born To Be Wild."
Turns out, Treadwell had a mike turned on during the attack. The Rangers found it, and though the movie features director Werner Herzog listening to the tape with a pained expression, he leaves out the actual sounds. But at the time of the killing, many press accounts ran excerpts. "They're killing me out here!" Treadwell screams to his girlfriend. "Hit him with something!" (Problem was, Treadwell himself stressed, "we do not carry anything that can hurt them.") "Hit him with the frying pan!" he screams next.
Shortly after the killings came the "whodunit?" Was it Cupcake or Freckles? Booble or Aunt Melissa? Perhaps adorable little Taffy? Treadwell named the bears, you see, much like Jane Goodall named her chimps. Perhaps Quincy was the culprit? "Quincy, do you remember when you stood over me?" That's Treadwell interacting with a massive bear on one of his videos. "You were so hungry, and you should have eaten me, but you didn't. Thanks for not eating me, Quincy--but if you had eaten me, good, 'cause you're a nice bear!"
Malibu's Grizzly People might gape at Treadwell's fate. No Grizzly hunter would. The ancients had better sense. "There can be no covenant between lions and men," wrote Homer. And as usual, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset shines a brilliant light: "The real care that man must exercise is in not pretending to make the beast equal to him," he writes in his Meditations On Hunting. "This is a stupid utopia, a beatific farce. Hunting, on the other hand, contains a rite where homage is paid to what is transcendent in the Laws of nature."
In other words, you Malibu Greenies: it's not nice to fool mother nature.
Humberto Fontova
Nasty, that's a mean spirited article. I loved it!
Thanks, I was in tears as I posted it.
Maybe I should try singing to alligators. I'll just have to learn all the lyrics of Kumbaya!
Oops...
bump!
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