Posted on 02/27/2006 7:55:25 AM PST by GodfearingTexan
Fellow FReepers,
Last night I watched the Discovery Channel's debut of Grizzly Man, a documentary based upon the life of Timothy Treadwell. The film was mostly footage that Treadwell shot himself in Alaska, but also included interviews with close friends and associates.
The dude was a nut, plain and simple. What he was thinking, I will never know. The film didn't do a very good job of explaining exactly what happened when he was killed. But it sounds like he happened upon a bear and before he could remove the camera lens cap, it attacked. Thus, there is audio of the attack but no video. His girlfriend was there and was also killed.
This guy would do really, really stupid things in his effort to "protect" the bears of Alaska. Such as walk right up to them in the wild, go swimming next to them, crawl on his hands and knees up to a sow with cubs singing....crazy @#$% like that. I hate to say this, but it was all a combination of hysterical rantings and Barney Hug speeches about bears and how much he loves them. It is absolutely no wonder that he was killed. Part of the reason may be that he was in Alaska so late in the year when he was killed. I thought I had read somewhere that bears eat the most right before they hybernate.
One of the last clips from his camera shows his girlfriend and he crouching literally two feet from a giant grizzly. The filmmaker stated something rather obvious, that looking at that bear (which may have been the one that killed him) one sees only the mild sense of boredom that he (the bear) is observing a potential meal; whereas Treadwell saw the same thing and thought he had established some sense of spiritual bonding with the bear. Or words to that effect.
All in all, however, it was a real good movie because you keep waiting for the bears to attack. Finally, one does and we don't get to hear the audio.
In the audio, which they describe but don't play, apparently you can hear Treadwell moaning and the girl screaming and hitting the bear on the head with a frying pan. Then, the bear grabs Treadwell by the leg and Treadwell tells his girlfriend to just run away. Apparently she didn't.
Pretty serious drama.
Anyway, that's all. Just wanted to make y'all aware of an entertaining film.
HUA!
I saw that too. I couldn't keep track of his incoherent ramblings very well but I caught enough to know that the guy was a nut who wouldn't have survived childhood around myself and my friends.
--here's an excellent book on "Treadwell"--
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525948864/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-5204565-3516611?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
I watched some of it.
After seeing Treadwell's antics, I started rooting for the bear.
It was a three hour-long treatment of a very simple concept:
Dumb-dumb gets too close to grizzly bear, Dumb-dumb gets eaten.
The sheer accident that his dumb-dumb happened to get some nice close-up bear photos in the process should be immaterial.
From the promos I saw, all the guy talked about was himself. Seems that the bears were actually secondary to whatever strange ego trip he was on --- Just props for his stunts.
his dumb-dumb = this dumb-dumb
Timothy Treadwell showing the power of stupidity...bet he was a lib...
Bears are not cuddly. They are usually the top of the food chain for a reason.
Watched a bit of it, what an idiot. OK to get yourself killed, but when your selfish stupidy gets your girlfriend killed also...
I could only take one hour of it and ended up watching a "Law and Order" repeat on the "vast wasteland".
Bear activist killed by Alaska grizzly
ASSOCIATED PRESS | 08 Oct 03
Posted on 10/08/2003 5:09:33 PM EDT by RussianConservative
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct. 8 — A self-taught bear enthusiast who once called Alaska’s brown bears harmless was one of two people fatally mauled in a bear attack in the Katmai National Park and Preserve. THE BODIES OF Timothy Treadwell, 46, and Amie Huguenard, 37, both of Malibu, Calif., were found Monday at their campsite when a pilot arrived who was supposed to take them to Kodiak, state troopers said Tuesday.
Treadwell, co-author of “Among Grizzlies: Living With Wild Bears in Alaska,” spent more than a dozen summers living alone with and videotaping Katmai bears. Information on Huguenard was not immediately available. The Andrew Airways pilot contacted troopers in Kodiak and the National Park Service after he saw a brown bear, possibly on top of a body, at the camp near Kaflia Bay. Park rangers encountered a large, aggressive male brown bear within minutes of arriving.
Ranger Joel Ellis said two officers stood by with shotguns as he fired 11 times with a semi-automatic handgun before the animal fell, 12 feet away. “That was cutting it thin,” said Ellis, the lead investigator. “I didn’t take the time to count how many times it was hit.” The victims’ remains and camping equipment were flown Monday to Kodiak. Ellis said investigators hope to glean some information from video and still cameras.
As the plane was being loaded, another aggressive bear approached and was killed by rangers and troopers. The bear was younger, possibly a 3-year-old, according to Bruce Bartley of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The victims’ bodies were flown to the state medical examiner’s office for autopsy.
Dean Andrew, owner of Andrew Airways, said the pilot was too upset to comment. The company had been flying Treadwell to Katmai for 13 years and Huguenard for the last couple of years. Andrew said Treadwell was an experienced outdoorsman.
CONFIDENCE AROUND BEARS Treadwell was known for his confidence around bears. He often touched them, and gave them names. Once he was filmed crawling along the ground singing as he approached a sow and two cubs. Over the years, Park Service officials, biologists and others expressed concern about his safety and the message he was sending. Advertisement
“At best he’s misguided,” Deb Liggett, superintendent at Katmai, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2001. “At worst he’s dangerous. If Timothy models unsafe behavior, that ultimately puts bears and other visitors at risk.”
That same year Treadwell was a guest on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” describing Alaska brown bears as mostly harmless “party animals.” In his book, Treadwell said he decided to devote himself to saving grizzlies after a drug overdose, followed by several close calls with brown bears in early trips to Alaska.
He said those experiences inspired him to give up drugs, study bears and establish a nonprofit bear-appreciation group, called Grizzly People. Grizzly and brown bears are the same species, but “brown” is used to describe bears in coastal areas and “grizzly” for bears in the interior. The deaths were the first known bear killings in the 4.7-million-acre park on the Alaska Peninsula.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/997664/posts
Sure hate to see the grizzly bears unprotected now that Treadwell and his girlfriend are eaten. Maybe we can put together a conservative trust fund and then pay Al Gore and Hillary to replace them!
LOL! I havn't even seen it, but after hearing about it I'm cheering the bear also.
Shouldn't that be Timothy Snackwell?
haha...one of the clips showed an interview with some fellow travelers who were sponsors of some kind for treadwell. they read some of the hate mail they received, and one of the letters said that the US should try to vastly increase the numbers of grizzlies in the US and plant them in Berkley, because bears eat libs and dems. haha.
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