When animals attack … Utah Bear edition
From the AP via the Denver Post …
Sam Ives was snatched from inside a tent that was a Father’s Day gift to his stepfather
The family had pitched their tent about a mile from a designated campground.
From the Salt Lake Tribune …
The bear is believed to have dragged 11-year-old Samuel Ives from his tent about 11:10 p.m. Sunday. The boy’s family - his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother - heard the boy’s scream “something’s dragging me” and rushed to help, but he and his sleeping bag were already gone.
His family thought the boy was abducted because the tear in the tent was so clean, said U.S. Forest Service officers. Wearing flip-flops and without a flashlight, the stepfather searched frantically for the boy and drove a mile down a dirt road to a developed campground.
“He was pounding on my trailer door. He said somebody cut his tent and took his son,” John Sheely, host of the Timpooneke campground, told the Associated Press. Sheely alerted authorities by driving down the canyon to a pay phone.
It became clear there had beenno kidnapping when searchers followed bear tracks into the forest and about 11:35 p.m. found the Samuel’s remains - about 400 yards away from the family’s shredded tent.
“The mother was broken up in tears and hanging onto to the other boy,” Sheely said.
An Ives family spokesman, Brad Rawlings, said the family is still in shock. He declined to give any more details about Samuel or his family, other than to say they are from Utah County.
The campsite is approximately 11 miles up American Fork Canyon and two miles above the paved road from the Timpooneke campground - some distance away from the developed portion of the campground.
According to Scott Root, a manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the bear likely was attracted to the campsite by food.
“He wasn’t trying to get a kid; he probably smelled something” in the tent, on the boy’s sleeping bag, or on the boy himself, Root said.
Still, it was the second attack Sunday in the same camping spot.
American Fork resident Jake Francom said a black bear swatted at his tent about 5:30 a.m. The bear hit him twice in the face through the tent wall before he woke up and realized what was happening.
“The first two [swats] were just kind of a feel,” Francom said.
The bear struck again, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. He said he felt the bear’s claws.
“When he saw me move in there, he gave it hell,” Francom said. “The sucker struck right through the tent and tore my pillow.
Francom yelled to his friend, “Troy, get your gun!”
Troy Strode woke, pulled a 9 mm handgun and shot into the air. The bear started running toward a hill about 50 yards away as Strode fired about six shots. Francom quickly put his girlfriend and Strode’s girlfriend in his truck.
Then the bear returned to the crest of the hill. “It just stared at us for about 30 seconds,” Francom said.
Francom’s brother, Kip, threw rocks at the animal and it walked away.
Also from the AP via TwinCities.com …
“When it’s hot and dry like this, bears are short of food,”
Officers killed that bear because it showed no fear when biologists tried to scare it away with firecrackers
In July 2006, a black bear bit the arm of a 14-year-old Boy Scout while he slept in a tent, also in Utah County. The female bear returned to the campground and was killed.
Black bears, which are found in 27 states, are “generally less aggressive than other bears and don’t prey on humans,” said Stewart Breck, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Collins, Colo.
The typical human-bear conflicts involve bears breaking into homes or cars.
“But it’s not breaking into a tent and killing,” Breck said.
