Wild animals are still dangerous (July 25)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
One of the things we forget pretty easily is how lucky we are that most wild animals stay in the woods, and that we are better off not having them around us, at least where we live. They aren’t cuddly.
We’ve had three reminders in the past two days.
First, a Kern County woman out walking her dogs was attacked by a bear Tuesday near the town of Caliente, about 30 miles southeast of Bakersfield, just off Highway 14 on the Bakersfield side of the Tehachapi Pass. She was walking in brush among some hills — a place where you might not think a bear would be. She and her dogs managed to fight the bear off, and she drove herself to the hospital, and now, after surgery, she is recovering.
On Thursday, there were two incidents. The most serious, near the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing, Alaska, involved a lodge employee being attacked by a grizzly, which grabbed her head in its mouth and tried to drag her away. Another lodge worker chased the bear away, and the victim of the attack was rushed to a hospital, where she was in critical condition. In the other Thursday incident, a bear stepped on a sleeping camper in a campground near Lake Tahoe. He was unhurt — just scared.
Wild animals at one time posed great danger to people, especially those who lived in the country. Bears, wolves, mountain lions and other big cats killed many humans when the west was being settled.
Conservationists who track bear, wolves and big cats in programs to observe and protect those animals very seldom go into the critters’ habitats without carrying guns.
That may be something we should think about before heading into the wild. It can be a dangerous place.
