Posts tagged as:

bears

Grizzly Man

by RhodesTer on October 14, 2009

Dorian, aka coffeesister, used to manage a video store.

During that time I authored a short-lived blog called “My Wife Works In A Video Store” with the sub-heading, “so I get to see all these cool DVDs for free!”

Basically it was just DVD reviews, posted on the weekend before they came out in the stores because I got a sneak preview of them, since my wife was the manager of a video store.

I thought I’d deleted the blog when she left the company, but I was wrong.

I stumbled across what’s left of it the other day, so I thought I’d pull one of the more interesting reviews off and repost it here.

This was first posted three and a half years ago, and it’s a review of a documentary about a REALLY NUTTY GUY.

Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog, assorted bears

“In nature, there are boundaries”
grisslymanposter I knew little about this documentary when I pulled it off the shelf, and I naively slid the disc into the machine expecting to see some type of scientist who lived among bears for a few years in order to study them, and therefore benefit them and mankind with the knowledge he gleans. Instead, I saw a documentary about a disturbed individual who lived among bears while nursing a secret desire to get eaten by them, which unfortunately for him, came true.

If it sounds like I’m being a little harsh on Timothy Treadwell, believe me – it’s deserved. People in the movie who knew him are harsh on him also, with the exception of a couple of flighty female friends who maintain his claim that he was just out to protect bears from the encroachment of mankind, because “he loved them so.”

That Tim Treadwell loved animals is obvious. He especially loved Wild Alaskan Grizzly Bears. He loved them so much that he was willing to forfeit his own life and that of his girlfriend in order to somehow benefit them in a misguided attempt to raise awareness of a plight that doesn’t really exist. Treadwell seemed to be under the impression that the bears are endangered, which isn’t true.

I don’t want to get into a big thing about bear conservation in this review, especially when Darrell, The Southern Conservative, covered the topic in a fascinating and extremely well written post last year that I happen to agree one hundred percent with. Suffice it to say that I think bears, especially 800 pound Alaskan Grizzly Bears, should be left alone. They shouldn’t be shot, fed, captured, talked to, played with, phoned up, invited to parties or added as friends on MySpace.

I know it comes across as anti-social, but I think people should just continue letting them have those thousands of acres of protected refuge up there so that they can roam around freely and do what bears do, and the wildlife service that’s entrusted with their care should just peek in on them now and then to make sure they’re okay. There, that’s all I’ll say about that.

Somehow, in a twisted perspective on the circle of life, Treadwell decided it’d be a good thing to go up there and spend 13 consecutive summers living among them in their refuge while avoiding the wildlife service people and disregarding their warnings that it probably wasn’t a terribly intelligent way to go about “helping” the bears. He took along some video equipment and got some outstanding footage of the bears in action though, which is one of the reasons I gave this DVD a high rating.

The other reason is that one can’t help but watch in morbid fascination as Treadwell goes about his business while knowing full well that he’s going to eventually end up as an appetizer. By the way, that’s no spoiler – the Director, Werner Herzog, tells you right up front about his sad demise. Fortunately for the squeamish it wasn’t filmed, and the existing audio track of Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in their last minutes of life is not used in the film (It’s believed that Amie had managed to start the camera during the bear attack, but didn’t get a chance to get the lens cap off. The result is a six minute audio track of their final moments which I understand includes a lot of screaming.)

This documentary is beautifully filmed, with most of the credit for that going to Treadwell. He had good instincts as a filmmaker and I wish he’d stuck to observing wildlife with a telephoto lens, so that we could enjoy his work for years to come. But instead of just filming Grizzlies from a respectable distance, he had an unfortunate tendency to plant the camera on a tripod and walk up to them as if he was walking into a supermarket to get a quart of milk. I have to admit it did make for an entertaining documentary though, especially when you know that it inevitably didn’t work out quite so well for him.

treadwellandfriend

In summation, I think it best that we go directly to the Protagonist and the Antagonist in this film, to get THEIR perspectives on the matter. Forget my opinion – judge for yourself whether or not you want to see this DVD by reading the following quotes directly from the source. First is Timothy Treadwell himself, as heard in the film in a segment shot not too long before the fatal attack that ended it all..

“I’m in love with my animal friends! I’m in love with my animal friends! In love with my animal friends! I’m very, very troubled. It’s very emotional. It’s probably not cool even looking like this. I’m so in love with them, and they’re so fucked over, which so sucks.”

Now, let’s hear from the bear that abruptly ended Treadwell’s mission, just moments before Rangers tracked it down and shot it..

“White meat make funny noises smell bad. Little silver meat in water gone away. I try chase brown furry meat but I old! Brown furry meat too fast! I so hungry I go to white meat that make funny noises and smell bad. White meat small and weak and no move fast so I taste it. HEY! IT TASTE BETTER THAN SMELL! It make loud noises so I crush it and eat. It make no more noise I eat and now I no hungry! WHITE MEAT TASTE GOOD! Later when I hungry again I go look for more!”

bear

Timothy Treadwell loved the bears. They loved him back, claiming that “he tasted just like chicken.”

4 very sharp, six inch long flesh shredding claws out of 5

RhodesTer on Twitter/Subscribe to this blog

{ 2 comments }

BEARS

by RhodesTer on August 14, 2009

NOTE – Rhodester is currently being held in the dungeon of a fancy resort hotel in Palm Springs California, where they have him chained to a stone wall as he laboriously plows through one training module after another to learn to be a night auditor. It was that or the soup line.

So today we have a guest poster, who happens to be a longtime blogging acquaintance of Rhodester’s. For reasons known only to him he goes by Krispy, and you’ll find his blog here.

In our own humble opinion, his blog is funny most of the time. Kind of depends on how many donuts he’s had.

—————————————————————————–

Don’t Feed The Bears

Think of this as a public service announcement. It’s something I’m posting simply because it’s a topic I care about and it’s worth taking the time to post it if even one person reads it and thinks about it or looks into it.

This is also an area where my feelings are passionate, and drift close to a mindset associated with those flaky, granola eating, tree hugging hippies. You have no idea how much that bugs me. To find myself agreeing with PETA about anything just makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Nonetheless, on this one topic, I’m in favor of…. (Oh, God, it hurts me to say this)… I’m in favor of animal rights.

There, I said it.

The topic is bears.

I have strong feelings about bears, and I don’t have any idea why. I can’t explain it. I’ve never been involved in any way with preserving or protecting bears, I’ve never spent time with bears, and I don’t believe that I was a bear in a “past life.” Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I’m pretty adamantly pro-bear, and I’m pretty strongly in favor of healthy and rational bear-human relationships.

That is to say, I don’t believe that there should be bear-human relationships. I think that the best thing that humans could do for bears is to leave them the hell alone.

With all of that in mind, please excuse me while I climb atop my soap-box and rant and rave about bears:

Point One: People shouldn’t keep bears in captivity.

Fat Brown Bear by Kashmut on Flckr

Bears don’t do well in zoos. Elephants don’t either, and some people argue that no animals should be kept in zoos. I’ll leave the elephants and other animals for someone else to rail about. I’ll just stick with the bears.

Naturally, bears are roamers. They travel in search of food – that’s just the way they’re built. If you check the internet for stats you’ll find that nobody agrees exactly how far a given bear of a given type will roam in a days time, but the one thing that all sources agree on is that they roam. And they roam far further than they’re allowed in the confines of even the biggest zoo.

When bears are kept in captivity they basically go insane. They sit there in one small area, denied the ability to follow their natural instincts, and they lose their bear minds. It becomes obvious too, as they pace and sway their heads back and forth. This isn’t behavior bears display in the wild. It’s just basic psycho-bear behavior. When you look at bears in zoos, you’re looking at crazy bears. Once you know that, it takes the fun out of it.

On occasion, bears escape from zoos and, well.. you can probably figure out what happens when a crazy bear is loose, roaming the suburbs. It happened at a zoo in my town in December of 2003. It wasn’t pretty.

Zoos aren’t even the worst of it. Circus bears go crazier, and sooner. In Europe, it’s still legal in most places to keep bears in captivity and force them to perform. They typically pull their teeth to try to make them harmless and keep them tied and muzzled, except when they’re being made to “dance.” I can’t imagine why anyone would want to see this kind of thing. It really makes me sick.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those nutcases who’s ready to burn down zoos over bear rights, but I think it’s appropriate to share this information and, hopefully, help change a few minds. If more people speak out in opposition to keeping bears in captivity maybe there’ll be fewer captive bears. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Point Two: People shouldn’t feed, hunt
or otherwise mess with bears in the wild

Bear Hug posted by Sleeper Cell on Flckr

Okay, my opposition to bear hunting is a hard sell… especially to bear hunters. The case against feeding wild bears, however, is easier to argue, especially since it’s illegal in many (if not most) places in the US.

And there are a number of good reasons why it’s illegal, too. For one thing, bears can really get grouchy. It just ain’t a good idea to attract them. For another thing, bears are far better off eating their own natural foods than eating human foods. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s research, bears that eat human food are a third less active and usually overweight. Human food makes bears fat and lazy. And why wouldn’t it? It makes us fat and lazy, after all. Well, anyway, I know it damn sure makes me fat and lazy.

I realize that getting people to agree with me on bear captivity and bear hunting isn’t really likely. Still, if by writing this, I can get a few people to decide that they’ll not try to feed wild bears if they ever have the opportunity, I’ll be happy. Bears have a hard enough time coexisting with us as it is. Heck, a lot of the time they can’t even get along with other bears. Bears are dangerous to people, and we’re dangerous to them, too. A lot of the time, when we cross paths, bears end up being exterminated. That’s unfortunate. Sometimes, contact with humans is fatal to bears in ways that are so sad, even the coldest heart is bound to feel a little sympathy.

While writing this I’ve realized why I have a lot of sympathy for bears – they’re big and often loud, they generally just want to be left alone, junk food makes them fat and lazy, they can be mean, and they don’t get along with anybody.

No, I wasn’t a bear in a “previous life,” but maybe I’m a bear in this one.

RhodesTer on Twitter/Subscribe to this blog

{ 8 comments }

Monetizing your widgets in the rain (with George Clooney)

July 8, 2008
Thumbnail image for Monetizing your widgets in the rain (with George Clooney)

I have decided to take immediate action and do something about my hit count.

23 comments Read the REST..