Posted on 09/11/2005 4:46:29 PM PDT by Archidamus
•As he's mauled by the bear, the marathoner can think only of his youngster's safety
In the split second before he saw the grizzly's fangs, Johan Otter heard his daughter Jenna's startled voice.
"Oh NO!" Jenna Otter, 18, had been hiking just ahead of her dad as they zigzagged up the steep switchbacks of the Grinnell Glacier Trail at Glacier National Park on Aug. 25. As she turned a blind corner just above the tree line, she stumbled into the path of a sow with two cubs.
The mother bear surged straight for the man. Her teeth sank into his right thigh, and her long claws raked his face, shattering his right eye socket.
In the surreal moments that followed, he tried to keep the bear focused on himself.
"Stay with me," he remembers thinking. "Just don't go to Jenna."
And so the bear, and the 43-year-old hospital administrator from Scripps Memorial Hospital, locked in an ancient battle hardwired into each of their genes: Protect your young at all costs. Even your life.
Otter, a marathoner, threw himself 30 feet down an embankment with the bear in pursuit to try to get further away from his daughter. The bear, estimated at about 400 pounds, landed on top of his back.
She had an "out of this world strength," said Otter. "I was like a rag doll, and I weigh 185 pounds." She flung him back and forth. By then, he could feel his spine had fractured. (Doctors would later find five breaks.)
Frantic, he tried to cover his head with his arms, as hikers are warned to do by park rangers.
"I felt her tooth go into my scalp," he said. Then he felt his scalp rip clean away.
Otter recounted his ordeal last week from Harborview Medical Center where surgeons bolted his battered body back together.
With his head clamped in the bear's jaws, he could hear his skull crack. And just as suddenly, he felt the bear release him.
He lay wedged into a stream, on a small embankment 50 feet below the trail. He couldn't move. What he couldn't see was his daughter curled into a fetal position, on a ledge 20-feet above him, her eyes wide open, facing the bear. The bear clamped down — biting first Jenna's face, then her shoulder.
Jenna didn't flinch, her father recounted later. "That's courage."
The bear, finally spent, left the two alone.
The pair, bleeding and shaken, yelled for help and within half an hour, four hikers discovered them.
Jenna Otter was treated at Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Montana, and released in good condition.
Johan Otter was airlifted to Harborview. Despite arriving with his skull exposed and having lost half his blood, he was conscious.
Doctors stabilized him until Dr. Nicholas Vedder and a team of plastic surgeons could transplant a square-foot of thin sheet muscle from his right side to make a new scalp.
Otter was released from Harborview. Doctors have said they're not sure yet how much of his eye function he'll recover, but he can already wiggle his toes, so they're optimistic about his recovery of movement.
The only thing he won't get back, for sure, is hair.
That doesn't matter to Otter. "I'm so lucky," he said.
ROTFLOL! Alrighty then...!
I took my chances in the state university I went to, although I heard about a lot of incidents. Probably lots of predators with no connection to the university whatsoever (along with the usual number of bums and people with mental problems), but admissions standards have a lot to do with it, too.
You did your best under the circumstances.
I heard that one of the most dangerous--if not the most dangerous--law enforcement job is that of park ranger.
And it is dangerous not so much because of animals, but because of human criminals in the parks.
Frankly, I'd rather have pepper spray than nothing which is what these people had. Do you have a link to the bear spray you use?
Amen.
Bear spray testimonials, http://www.udap.com/testify.htm
This stuff is better than a pistol of any caliber
"Would a pistol have been enough to at least scare a grizzly away?"
Actually, I think the question is, "Would two .22 bullets in each of the bear's eyes and several pumped into his midsection at least have slowed him down."
I'm wondering whether bobcats are interbreeding with the mountain lions which people have been seeing around here.
Sure, but how reliable are testimonials?
I just saw the movie Grizzly Man...I highly recommend it
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1464521/posts
How good is your aim while you're running away from the target?
They just finished making movie about that incident.
It's coming out very soon.
It was made by a famous director--I believe Werner Herzog is the director.
Funny how the crap you go through the more "lucky" people tell you are.
"How good is your aim while you're running away from the target?"
Good enough to hit him in the gut and testicles and THEN the eyes.
No, I personally have not. My job is such that I have contact with bear experts almost daily during the summer. I deal with bears on their home turf frequently. I am responsible for the safety of workers in bear country in remote areas. Are you? Well.......are you?
Could be, we also have a cat, (starts with a J but I can't remember the world, (Spanish)) that looks like a small mountain lion with a very long tail and is black. I have personally seen two of these at Savannah River Plant in South Carolina but we have them where I live in Georgia also.
I prefer using spent uranium rounds- it'll easily pierce a grizzly and, if there just happens to be one walking behind him, it'll take him out, too. Eat lead err...depleted uranium, Grizzly!
In it he says this, Chapter 8, Pepper Spray Defence:
"Pepper spray defence against bears is an extremely important subject, because there are more bears now that do not fear people, and there are fewer people who carry firearms for defense against bears. Sprays are not equal to firearms for defense, nor do they work in every situation, but there are at least four or five people every year in B.C. who save themselves from serious injury or death, with the use of sprays. According to my own research, people who carry spray and know how to use it, can more than triple their chance of surviving a bear attack than people who follow the present wisdom of 'play dead with a grizzley, and fight back with a black bear'."
We use Counter Assault. There are others, the key is to get at least 1-2% Capsaicin.
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