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Wild America: Reports of string of animal attacks across nation

Wild America: Reports of string of animal attacks across nation

Reports of bison, shark, bear and coyote attacks seem to prove the premise of a sci-fi show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ4H651guDM

For many Americans, summertime features camping, hiking and trips to the beach, and fireworks.

This year, wild animals are adding a surprising, new element to the seasonal fun: Terror!

In Colorado, a teen camper woke up to the sound of crunching to find his head in the maw of a bear.

The noise was the sound of large teeth scraping against his skull, he told Denver ABC-affiliate KMGH. A black bear, the teen realized, was trying to pull him out of his sleeping bag by his head.

“It grabbed me like this and pulled me, and then it bit the back of my head and dragged me,” the teen, identified only by his first name, Dylan, told KMGH. “When it was dragging me, that was the slowest part. It felt like it went forever.”

Fellow staffers and campers were roused by the commotion and tried to scare the bear away as Dylan fought back. The bear dragged Dylan about 10 feet, then dropped him and walked away.

Dylan was taken to the hospital. His injuries weren’t life-threatening. Authorities are searching for the bear, which will likely be euthanized, according to the Associated Press.

In North Dakota, an Alaska man is recovering after being attacked by a bison while hiking in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Park official Eileen Andes said the 65-year-old hiker encountered the large animal on a trail after taking photos of a sunset. He tried to walk around the bison but didn’t provide a wide enough berth, the Minot Daily News reported.

The bison apparently threw the man into a bush, knocking him unconscious, Andes said. When the man regained consciousness, he was bleeding from a leg laceration but made his way to the trailhead. When he saw more bison, he climbed several feet up a butte.

“The guy kept yelling, ‘help, help, and help,’” said Christopher Velazquez, one of three airmen from Minor Airforce Base who were camping nearby and heard the man’s faint calls.

Ever since the blockbuster movie, Jaws, Americans are always a little leery of the ocean. This past week, a kayaker was attacked by a Great White in Monterey Bay in California. This attack was led to a 4-day ocean ban in the area.

On the other side of the country, a swimmer’s legs were bitten by a shark in Florida off the coast of a popular nude beach.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Lt. Felipe Lay said the unidentified man was swimming in the afternoon off Haulover Beach when he was attacked, according to WPLG-TV. Haulover Beach is 9 miles north of Miami Beach.

Miami-Dade Fire Fescue Ocean Rescue lifeguards said they became aware of a shark in the water and immediately alerted beachgoers to get out of the water. Officials said the shark was 4-to-5 feet long.

Dogs may be man’s best friend…but their cousins are a different story entirely. While a Nebraska family was watching fireworks, a coyote attempted to drag off their one-year-old.

A family gathered for fireworks reported that one of the coyotes attacked a 1-year-old boy, biting him in the back, and tried to drag him away.

The boy’s mother told reporters she screamed and grabbed her son, scaring the animal off. The boy suffered a pair of shallow punctures in his lower back and was treated and released at a hospital.

There is a sci-fi TV series called Zoo, which is based on a James Patterson novel in which scientists and investigators look into the the mysterious pandemic of violent animals attacks upon humans all over the world.

Perhaps fiction has become fact?

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Former co-worker was recently attacked by a bear as well. http://www.nbc26.com/news/national/tucson-woman-says-she-was-attacked-by-bear

Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ will air on TCM later this week.

buckeyeminuteman | July 12, 2017 at 10:20 am

Two things:

1. Never swim in the ocean naked. The thought of my giblets hanging out there for a shark to nibble on is absolutely terrifying.

2. Never go out into the wild without a .357, .44 or 12 gauge on hand. Guns don’t kill people, but bears and cougars do!

This stuff is only new if you’ve been living under a rock and you’re part of the ADD crowd. Wild animals react to human encroachment of their habitat and California burns. Certainly not always, but frequently enough that it should come as a shock to nobody. Why get your undies in a bunch just because some clueless, alarmist twit recently discovered that the sun always rises in the east?

    Arminius in reply to Merlin. | July 12, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    It isn’t so much we’re encroaching on their territory but they are encroaching on ours because they begin to associate people with food. And they learn that people pose no danger to them, whereas through most of the history of human habitation in North America they’d avoid people no matter how tempting the food might be they learned they’d catch a spear, an arrow, or a bullet. Up until about a 100 years ago that is. Now there’s no reason for them to avoid temptation in suburban and even urban areas.

    Coyotes, wolves, and to a lesser extent Mountain Lions, follow a definite pattern. First they start to approach closer to inhabited areas at night. Then they’ll start stealing pet food and garbage (one idiot lady would actually leave a cat feeder full of food behind my house when I lived near San Diego; naturally I destroyed it). Then they’ll start eating the pets, moving up to larger animals such as sheep or goats (Wolves will eat the pets but they’ll usually start with the larger animals).

    When you start seeing them during the daytime you know you have a real problem on our hands. Because they’re well on their way from merely associating people with food to thinking people are food. It’s no longer safe to leave even relatively large dogs in your backyard or walk them during the day. I know of at least 11 Coyotes attacking an 80lb lab. They didn’t attack the lady walking the dog; it’s called prey fixation. Naturally they’ll take smaller dogs as well as cats right under their owner’s eyes because they’re no longer afraid of people.

    Coyotes are smart, bold hunters. I remember one time I was in the driveway washing my car. Lots of people were doing the same or working in their yards. And a Coyote bitch comes trotting up the middle of the street right past us all. She didn’t even give us a glance. How did I know she was female? Because the local Coyotes had developed a very effective technique to acquire dog meat. A bitch in heat would come trolling through the neighborhoods, and any male dogs would go crazy to get out of their yards to chase after her. And she’d lead them right back to where the rest of the pack was waiting.

    When I lived in San Diego, and now that I live in Texas, I’d often see coyotes laying or sitting in parks, looking at the kids playing. As I said, now they see people as food, and children will be attacked.

Perhaps fiction has become fact?

Well, a lot of people believe in Global Warming™, too.

We’re not profiling wild animals here, are we? Attendance at a reeducation camp (aka Evergreen State College) may be in order if we cross the line and actually address public safety.

Too many people watching those Disney wildlife docs, telling people wild animals will not attack humans, if they are not cornered or teased. Animals will attack and eat people, because they are hungry and bears will eat anything.

I personally witnessed a pack of coyotes stalk then attack a women walking two dogs on a leash in a suburban area. I witnessed the coyotes drag both dogs into the weeds, by the snout and tail. I helped her and got her dogs back, bloody but alive.

I personally witnessed a black bear and her cubs stroll down a mountain lake path heading my way and once they caught wind of me watched me carefully but not attack. A standoff for many minutes but no drama.

I’ve had bears enter my camp and not attack.

Just unpredictable what they will do.

    Paul in reply to richardb. | July 12, 2017 at 11:17 am

    Your story reminds me of the time that Governor Rick Perry reportedly shot a coyote while out jogging with his dog. The coyote made a move on his dog and Perry shot the coyote.

      richardb in reply to Paul. | July 12, 2017 at 3:54 pm

      I wish I had had a .380 or 9mm at the time. I’m ugly enough to scare most 4 legged creatures so didn’t need the firepower. The worst part afterwards was the weeks cleaning the burrs off my dogs thick coat.

Reminds me a bit of one of my daughter’s third grade campouts. Gazing down the hill from the area where we were serving food I noticed a couple of children slipping into one of the tents with plates of food, so I bellowed out “NO EATING IN THE TENTS!” – and about a hundred kids came running out of those tents.

There is an excellent reason for this long-standing camping rule: It keeps the critters out. That is the same reason that smart campers either suspend their groceries in a tree or lock them in the car.

Sure, some of these “attacks” might be because the fires in the West are causing hunger among the animal population but more than a few are simply due to human ignorance.

Most wild animal attacks are the result of the Disneyland Mentality. In our society today, a huge number of people ignore the potential dangers around them. They have been taught that there are dangers in our society. It is like living in Disneyland.

Usually wild animals do not attack human, unless they feel threatened, are extremely hungry or somehow diseased. But, they are still dangerous. When people still went walking in the woods, on a regular basis, they were taught to avoid close encounters with animals, from poisonous snakes to bears. Nowadays, people leave their urban and suburban homes to explore the “wilderness” and take no precautions. They enter an area, which is rife with dangerous animals and people, armed only with a stick and a Swiss Army Knife. They decide to “sleep under the stars”, in bear and cougar country, and then are surprised when a bear drags them out of their sleeping bag by the head, to get a better look at them.

Wild animals are not really dangerous. Human stupidity is.

I was exiting a 7-11 late last night when I spotted a trio of sharks hanging out in the parking lot.
They had skateboards and were smoking.
I got into my car and got the heck out of there!

This Story is about 20+ years out of date now, but there is a Christian Summer Camp for boys in the Adirondack Mountains near Speculator, NY, on Whitaker Lake which runs 4 two-week wilderness camping sessions every summer.

I can’t remember if it was 1994 or 1995, but during the third session that year in the middle of the night, a large Black Bear broke down the door to the kitchen, rampaged through the kitchen to the walk-in refrigerator, tore the door off the refrigerator and gorged itself on all the food it could eat. Two or three days later, it startled one of the campers on their way to the sleeping building, and a hunting party was organized to shoot it, with the permission of the NY Wildlife Dept. as a danger to the campers. The next day, the Bear tried to break down the door to one of the instructional cabins, and they shot it.

This is an organization that is known for trying to have as little impact on the wildlife as possible, and specifically teaches NOT to let the wildlife acclimate to you as a person.

As near as we could all figure, it must have wandered about 10 miles from the nearest campground where it must have been interacting with people on a regular basis in order to get to where it was.

But Yogi Bear was so cute. Several years ago I witnessed people standing 30 feet from a bear taking pictures with a pocket camera. People aren’t overly smart.

Walker Evans | July 12, 2017 at 6:30 pm

Leslie, in regard to the bison incident at Roosevelt National Park — Minot Air Force Base is many things, but it is definitely not minor!

Gremlin1974 | July 12, 2017 at 9:16 pm

I have had people ask me on many occasions when I am going into the woods, why I carry a pistol even when I am not hunting. I usually answer with the question; “What do you do if you hear a baby crying in the woods?” Of course they all say check it out until I tell them that baby cougars and bobcats sound just like a baby crying. I carry the sidearm for protection from wild animals.