Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

If A Bear Attacks…

Achenblog: Daily Humor and Observations from Joel Achenbach
Bears will usually not eat something they believe is already dead. Thus you should collapse on the ground and stay absolutely still, like roadkill. Even if you feel the animal sniffing at your feet, and then slowly nosing its way up your body, and you can tell that it is getting angrier and angrier as it begins to growl and root around with its snout and teeth and giant wet tongue, and finally it’s at your neck, and you feel the saliva gushing from its gaping, slobbering, beastly maw, don’t move.

Joel Achenbach is just kidding around, of course, but this is a good opportunity to remind people of how they should REALLY act if they’re threatened by a bear

First of all, unless you’re hiking in Alaska or the Rockies, the kind of bear you’d be running into would be a black bear — not a grizzly. Black bears and grizzlies are different in how they behave, so this is worth knowing.

Actual black bear attacks are very VERY rare. It’s much more likely that, in the rare event you encounter a black bear, the bear will just be acting threatening in order to mask its own fear. The bear may slap the ground or nearby trees or shrubs very hard with its front paws and make a loud “huff” noise. Or, the bear may even make a couple of bluff charges in your direction. What you want to do in this kind of situation is NOT to make yourself small! You want to stand up tall, hold your arms up and out to make yourself appear larger. Yell at the bear! Act aggressive! Black bears are, by nature, very timid animals and will usually run away if you show them you’re in charge.

The bear in the picture up above, by the way, is one Mark and I met when we did the black bear study course through The Wildlife Research Institute with Lynn Rogers last summer. Dr. Rogers knows pretty much everything there is to know about black bears and, if they interest you at all (or even if you just enjoy getting out in the woods with nature), I very highly recommend that you take one of his summer courses. Another thing you might want to do, if you like bears and want to see them protected, is contribute to the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota.