Timothy Treadwell is a good lesson about how it happens that I and others can do stupid things for a long time and somehow things seems OK. Then one day the whole thing explodes in your face.
He thought he had a good working friendship with bears. And for a long time it seemed he did. He got away with it for an unusual amount of time. But when one does dumb things, eventually it catches up with him.
He thought he had a good working friendship with bears. And for a long time it seemed he did. He got away with it for an unusual amount of time. But when one does dumb things, eventually it catches up with him.
Around noon on Sunday, October 5, 2003, Treadwell spoke with an associate in Malibu, California, by satellite phone; Treadwell mentioned no problems with any bears. The next day, October 6, Willy Fulton, a Kodiak air taxi pilot, arrived at Treadwell and Huguenard's campsite to pick them up but found the area abandoned, except for a bear, and contacted the local park rangers. The couple's mangled remains were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wristwatch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt. A large male grizzly (tagged Bear 141) protecting the campsite was killed by park rangers during their attempt to retrieve the bodies. A second adolescent bear was also killed a short time later, when it charged the park rangers. An on-site necropsy of Bear 141 revealed human body parts such as fingers and limbs. The younger bear was consumed by other animals before it could be necropsied.[citation needed] In the 85-year history of Katmai National Park, this was the first known incident of a person being killed by a bear.[12]
A video camera was recovered at the site that proved to have been operating during the attack, but police said that the six-minute tape contained only voices and cries as a brown bear mauled Treadwell to death The tape begins with Treadwell yelling that he is being attacked. "Come out here; I'm being killed out here," he screams. [13]That the tape contained only sound led troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffel bag or during the dark of night. In Grizzly Man,[2] filmmaker Herzog claims that the lens cap of the camera was left on, suggesting that Treadwell and Huguenard were in the process of setting up for another video sequence when the attack happened. The camera had been turned on just before the attack, presumably by sound activation, but the camera recorded only six minutes of audio before running out of tape. This, however, was enough time to record the bear's initial attack on Treadwell and his agonized screams, its retreat after Huguenard tells Treadwell to play dead and when she attacked it and its return to carry Treadwell off into the forest.[5][12]
