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The Golden Retriever was covered in blood after saving it’s 11-year-old owner from a cougar attack in Boston Bar, B.C.

A faithful White Retriever saved an 11-year-old boy from a vicious cougar attack in Boston Bar, B.C. Friday.

RCMP say that the boy, named Austin, and dog were in their family’s backyard when a cougar started advancing on the child.

Sgt. Peter Thiessen said the boy was spared from the encounter when the White Retriever jumped in the way and took the brunt of the attack.

The two animals began attacking each other, giving the boy time to run home and call 9-1-1.

A Boston Bar RCMP officer was near the area and arrived minutes later to find the dog in a brutal fight for survival against the larger predator under the home’s porch.

As the cougar bit down on the retriever’s neck, the RCMP officer advanced on the wild animal and fired two shots into the cat’s rear end.

The cougar continued its attack, so the officer walked up to the cat and fired again, this time killing the animal.

Police say the dog survived with minor injuries and the boy was completely unharmed.

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A Miracle Beach man is taking a bear mauling in stride this week after a black bear swiped the top of his head and sent him flying 10 feet.

Today, Ed Claydon says the whole experience should serve as a public reminder that bears are feeding and should be treated with respect.

Claydon was going out to the car shortly around 7:45 Thursday evening with a flashlight when he heard a growling sound.

He took another step and heard another growl.

He stopped under an apple tree and, thinking it was a raccoon or something, he looked down at the ground.

Little did he know a black bear was sitting in the tree directly above him. It took a swipe, and sent him flying.

When he landed, Claydon shone the flashlight at the apple tree and met his adversary.

He quickly skirted away from the bear, back toward the house and let himself in the back door.

“When I saw him I couldn’t even comprehend what had happened,” said his wife, Joy. “His face was dripping in blood. I thought maybe he’d caught his face on a tree branch but he said no, a bear just attacked me.” She took him to the hospital, where the deep gash on the top of his head was stitched up and released.

Aside from the stitches he also sustained injuries to his shoulder – which took the brunt of his fall.

But his pain could have been a lot worse.

If he hadn’t looked down the gash could have been across the side of his face.

The Claydons live about 500 yards from Black Creek, where bears hang out and gorge themselves on salmon.

Though they pick and use most of their apples, they leave the very high ones – too high to reach with a ladder – for the wind and eventually, the deer to enjoy.

“I guess when we were attracting the deer we were also attracting the bears,” Joy Claydon said. “I guess he moral of the story is don’t leave any fruit on the ground.” Even after the attack Ed Claydon, says he doesn’t feel the bear meant him any particular harm.

He didn’t even ask the conservation officers to attend.

Conservation officer Ben York advises people to let his office investigate and decide whether a bear is dangerous or not.

He says in most cases, if a bear was acting defensively, people will be educated about bear attractants and the bear will be left alone.

If a bear is acting aggressively or in a predatory manner it will be investigated, tracked down and removed.

But the Claydons said the bear definitely fell into the first category.

“The bear meant him no malice,” said Joy Claydon. “It was just a swat to say get away from my tree. It was not a rogue bear.” The last bear complaint conservation officers had from the Miracle Beach area was in August.

“It’s been extraordinarily quiet,” said York. “It’s been one of the quietest years across B.C. we’ve had in years.

“We haven’t even set a trap yet and usually at this time of year we have all of our traps going.” He suspects good berry crop, abundant pink salmon stocks in the rivers, and more bear awareness mean bears don’t need to depend on human garbage as much as they have in the past.

“It might even be because people are starting to learn,” said York.

Though bears usually hibernate by late November or mid December, bear sightings can occur on the coast year round.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

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Young folk singer dead after attack by coyotes in Nova Scotia park

HALIFAX, N.S. — A young Canadian folk singer who had just set off on a solo tour to boost a promising musical career died Wednesday after being mauled by two coyotes in what is believed to be one of the country’s first fatal attacks by the animals.

Taylor Mitchell was hiking alone in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park on Tuesday afternoon when a pair of coyotes attacked her, leaving her critically injured with bite wounds covering most of her body.

The 19-year-old singer’s screams for help were heard by at least two other hikers, who rushed to the Skyline Trail and called 911 at around 3 p.m. as the animals continued their brutal attack on the young Toronto woman.

Mitchell, who was on a three-week tour of the region to promote her debut CD, was to play in Sydney, N.S., on Wednesday night when she decided to go for a hike in the scenic park.

“She loved going into the woods and hiking,” Lisa Weitz, her manager in Toronto, said through tears. “She was absolutely pumped about her first tour on the East Coast and to take her songwriting craft to new audiences…

“She just had a wonderful joy of life and sharing music.”

Mitchell, who had about a dozen concert dates in the Maritimes, was rushed to a local hospital and then airlifted to Halifax. She died at about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, police said.

Paul Maynard of Emergency Health Services said she was already in critical condition when paramedics arrived on the scene and was bleeding heavily from multiple bite wounds.

“She was losing a considerable amount of blood from the wounds,” he said.

“This was really out of the ordinary – the first I’ve heard of something like this.”

RCMP Sgt. Brigdit Leger said officers shot one of the two animals, apparently wounding it, but both managed to get away.

An official with Parks Canada said they barricaded the entrance to the trail where Mitchell was attacked and were trying to find the animals to determine what prompted such an unusual attack.

Helene Robichaud, the park’s superintendent, said there have been a handful of reports of aggressive coyotes over the last 15 years, but they have not seen any attacks on people.

“There’s been some reports of aggressive animals, so it’s not unknown,” she said. “But we certainly never have had anything so dramatic and tragic.”

Officials shot a coyote late Tuesday, but Robichaud doubted that it was one of the two involved in the attack.

The provincial Natural Resources Department said there is no other record of a fatal coyote attack on a human in Nova Scotia since the animals were first discovered in the province in the ’70s.

In 2003, a teenage girl was bitten on the arm by a coyote while walking on the same trail as Mitchell, said Germaine LeMoine of Parks Canada. The girl’s parents managed to scare the animal away.

Biologists said it’s unlikely the coyotes involved had contracted rabies or were protecting young animals.

Bob Bancroft, a Nova Scotia wildlife biologist, said coyotes shy away from humans. But not all animals – particularly young, inexperienced coyotes in parks – view humans as predators.

“This is probably just a couple of coyotes that saw something vulnerable and went for it,” he said. “It’s horrible. It’s not something you would expect at all.”

Coyotes in the region are larger and behave somewhat differently than their counterparts in Western Canada, he said. Large males in Nova Scotia can weigh up to 60 pounds.

Simon Gadbois, a professor at Dalhousie University who studies animal behaviour, said hikers should always be vigilant and aware of their surroundings.

Should a hiker unintentionally surprise a coyote or other animal, Gadbois has simple, potentially life-saving advice: Never act like prey.”The worst thing you can do is start running away,” he said. “Wave your arms, shout, just show that you mean business basically and most animals will think twice.”

Ethel Merry, who manages a motel 10 kilometres from the park in Cheticamp, said people in the area have been seeing more coyotes in the last three years and are calling for controls on their numbers.

Merry said she and her family have seen packs of up to seven coyotes wandering around people’s yards and attacking pets.

“I’m not surprised at all that this happened,” she said. “The coyotes are all around us. … I am so afraid to walk my road.”

Mitchell, who graduated from the Etobicoke School of the Arts, had recently been nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award and was being roundly praised for her songwriting talent.

Mitchell’s MySpace site shows the singer standing in the woods with her guitar and a suitcase at her side, along with the cover photo of her album, “For Your Consideration.”

Weitz said the singer had just gotten her licence and a new car, which she loaded with her CDs before setting off alone on the tour.

“She was a beautiful, dynamic, young, talented woman and we’re all so saddened and shocked,” Weitz said.

“She was such a young and old soul at the same time. She just knew how to beautifully craft a song.”

Singer Suzie Vinnick met the performer about three years ago and acted as a mentor, teaching her guitar as Mitchell played bars in Ontario and started to garner attention.

“She was really keen and hungry in a really positive way,” she said in an interview. “She was a great lyricist and held a lot of promise. I mean, she was at it for two years and already managed to get a Canadian Folk Music nomination.”

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Nursing bite wounds inflicted by a grizzly bear, two B.C. hunters are thankful to have survived a harrowing attack inside their tent.

Jeff Hebert and Ken Scown, both of Nelson, B.C., were camping overnight Wednesday in the East Kootenays when the grizzly bear attacked about 10:20 p.m.

Scown, 36, was asleep but Hebert, 32, was reading and heard the bear charge their tent.

“There was no warning, there was no other sound other than the sound of something very heavy running towards the tent and huffing — just a deep, guttural huff and it was getting closer very fast,” said Hebert.

He woke Scown and grabbed his rifle beside him, which didn’t have a round in the chamber as a safety precaution.

“She came so fast I didn’t even have time to cycle the bolt — she hit us in the tent and collapsed the tent over top of us and started mauling my partner,” said Hebert.

“She was just trashing and tossing us both around.”

The grizzly mauled the men from outside the tent and they couldn’t see the animal, but the tracks in the snow later proved it was a bear.

“It was absolutely terrifying — pretty much every tenter’s worst nightmare to get attacked in your tent at night,” said Scown, a forester.

While the bear mauled Scown, Hebert used his right hand to prepare his rifle to fire and attempted to push the grizzly off his friend with his left hand.

“That’s when she turned and bit me in the arm,” he said, adding he then stuck the gun underneath the bear and pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire because the round wasn’t properly in the chamber.

After attacking the pair for about a minute, the bear gave up and wandered away.

“Thank God, I guess we fought back hard enough that she decided we weren’t an easy meal and left,” said Hebert, nursing a pair of two-inch deep bite wounds to his left forearm.

Scown had been wearing more layers and amazingly suffered only three puncture wounds that aren’t as deep.

They hiked 5 km to their truck and drove 1 1/2 hours to Cranbrook Hospital for treatment.

The experienced outdoorsmen both intend to continue hunting.

Scown said he disagrees with the decision of local conservation officers, who ruled the bear wasn’t behaving in a predatory manner and shouldn’t be tracked and killed.

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This is really tragically bad luck.

MONTREAL – A man fought off a bear to save his wife on an isolated forest trail in La Tuque only to have a car accident rushing her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The man, in his 40s, is in a state of shock, police said.

The husband was clearing brush near a forest road about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday when his wife was attacked by a bear. The man managed to pull his wife from the bear’s clutches and was driving to the nearest hospital, a 90-minute drive, when he lost control of the car and headed into a ditch.

Nearby residents found the couple and contacted police.

The couple was rushed to the hospital, but the woman did not survive.

The exact cause of her death has yet to be determined.

Quebec wildlife officials are heading today to La Tuque, about 270 kilometres north of Montreal, to capture the bear, Sûreté du Québec Sgt. Claude Denis said.

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A family photo of Caleigh Cunning, 5, who survived an attack by a seal.

Photograph by: Handout, …

METRO VANCOUVER — Minutes after she escaped from a harbour seal that had pulled her into the water off West Vancouver’s Thunderbird Marina, Caleigh Cunning had a few questions for her father.

“She said, ‘Daddy, why did the seal drag me in the water?’” her father, North Vancouver resident Mike Cunning, said Wednesday.

“I said, ‘I think the seal wanted you to go for a swim.’

“She said, ‘Well, the seal wasn’t very nice.’”

At about 6 p.m. Tuesday, Cunning, Caleigh and some friends were standing at a dockside fish-cleaning table, washing the day’s catch.

Cunning turned from his daughter for a moment and heard a splash.

“I looked over and couldn’t see my daughter anywhere.”

Caleigh, who’d been wearing a life jacket, popped up about two metres away.

“I said, ‘Caleigh, swim to me, swim to me Caleigh!’”

Cunning said his friend, who had seen the incident, told him the seal had jumped four feet out of the water, took Caleigh by the arm and dragged her into the water.

The incident — from the moment the seal grabbed Caleigh to her recovery back on the dock — took about 10 to 15 seconds, he said.

“It just happened so quickly. It was instantaneous.”

Caleigh treaded water back to the dock. When Cunning pulled his crying, shocked daughter out of the water, he saw her hand was swollen and covered in blood.

Caleigh was treated at Lions Gate Hospital for five puncture wounds to her wrist and placed on antibiotics to ward off infection.

Conflicts between humans and harbour seals are rare, said Paul Cottrell, marine mammal coordinator for the federal department of fisheries and oceans’ Pacific region.

Seals are most likely to appear where they have easy access to food, and that includes marinas, he said.

He said Caleigh had been throwing fish guts and bits to seals earlier that evening, a common but discouraged practice, which may have left fish slime on her hands.

The slime’s scent most likely attracted the seal because it was accustomed to eating thrown fish scraps.

“This is a case of a harbour seal misinterpreting this girl’s hand, thinking that it was a piece of fish.”

Cottrell said the DFO encourages marinas to supply containers for fish remnants near cleaning tables.

Though the incident was a harrowing one, it could have been worse, Cunning said.

Caleigh is taking swimming lessons and she’s confident around the water, said Cunning, an avid fisherman.

“She loves fishing and reeling in fish. She’s been around the ocean all her life.”

Many years ago, a member of Cunning’s extended family drowned when she was five years old, so he is very sensitive and safety-conscious around water, he said.

“Her life jacket gets on in the parking lot, and it doesn’t come off until we get back to the car.”

Thunderbird Marina manager Fred McDonald said though seals are a common sight at the marina, this is the first incident he’s heard of involving an aggressive seal.

Cunning said he was concerned low fish stocks have resulted in an abundance of seals gathering around marinas, which could pose a threat to humans.

But Cottrell said the seal population “has flattened out and stabilized. It’s hit a natural balance.”

About 40,000 seals populate the Strait of Georgia, and about 110,000 seals live along the B.C. coast, Cottrell said.

He said interaction with seals could be pursued as a violation of the Fisheries Act. The regulations apply to people who initiate feeding, touching or swimming with a marine mammal.

Cottrell knew of one similar incident: a B.C. sport fisherman was bitten by a harbour seal as he tried to release a juvenile salmon into the water.

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ONTARIO, Canada -

Judy Brown admitted she was still in shock and mourning as she remembered her good friend, Bernie Jackson, a retired Neosho Junior High School principal who was one of two men killed by a tornado that hit their campsite in Ontario, Canada, Thursday night.

Brown said Jackson was “Mr. Education. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. People Person.”

Bernie Jackson, 65, who served as Neosho Junior High School principal for nine years, retired in the summer of 2006. Jackson, of Ponca City, Okla., and Stan Hollis, 79, were killed by a tornado that hit about 9 p.m. Thursday and destroyed two cabins in the camp area. The tornado was rated an EF2, with wind speeds between 113 and 157 miles per hour, according to Environment Canada, the Canadian equivalent to the National Weather Service.

Dennis Kinkaid, 66, was still missing as of Friday evening, the Associated Press reports. The incident happened at a fishing resort next to Lac Seul in northwestern Ontario.

According to the Tulsa World, this is the 23rd year for the men to go on a summer camping trip.
Jackson retired from the Ponca City School District in Ponca City, Okla., before coming to the Neosho School District in 1997.

It was then that Brown, long-time junior high school secretary, found herself working for Jackson. It was that year that Jackson and Brown became friends, as well as colleagues.

“I just can’t imagine this world without Bernie Jackson,” said Brown, who has worked for the Neosho R-5 School District for 27 years with the junior high school. “Bernie loves people, and I am saying that in the present tense because it is still hard for me to grasp. He loved his faculty. He was always taking good care of people. You could go to him as a sounding board for your thoughts. You could go to him for advice, and he would help you think things through. He loved the kids, and always had wonderful stories to tell.”

Brown said Jackson was a family man, as well as a man of education. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn, two children, and four grandchildren.

“He would always talk about his grandchildren, because they were always so special to him,” Brown said. “Bernie was always doing things for other people. He would be working late in the evening to make a big, huge pot of soup for the entire faculty. He was so fun. He very seldom got angry, and when he did, he controlled it very well.”

Brown said everyone was excited for Jackson when he retired in 2006, because they knew he would be able to do the things he enjoyed like hunt, fish and golf.

“He was also a wonderful cook, and he had a big garden every year,” Brown said. “He would bring food in the office and share them. He was just always thinking of other people. I have never worked for anybody who was more giving and gracious, and compassionate. We were a part of his family, and he loved us. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t respect him. I can’t say enough about how much I respected him, and loved him.”

Shirley Cummins, a current member of the Neosho R-5 School Board and a retired R-5 administrator who worked alongside Jackson, said he was one of the most “positive and compassionate educators I think I have ever worked with. He always had a smile on his face, and he always had something good to say about people. He has been a counselor, an educator, in human resources and he was excellent in dealing with people. He had many strong suits, but I think those positive people skills were his best.”

Cummins said she and her husband, Sonny, and Jackson and his wife, Marilyn, went on a cruise together the summer Jackson retired.

“We just had the best time,” Cummins said.

Cummins said Jackson was good for Neosho and the district, and Darren Cook, current principal at Neosho High School, echoed that statement.

“Bernie was a kind man, and he had a big heart,” Cook said. “He was always thinking of others. Why he came back after retiring in Oklahoma to be principal in Neosho is because he loved working with kids. He had a great love for students.”

Dr. Richard Page, superintendent of Neosho R-5 Schools, said he was shocked to hear of the news of Jackson’s death.

“Bernie was a good person and a good friend, and he always remembered us here in Neosho,” Page said. “We are sure sad to hear of the loss. He was a great educator and a great person, and this is a sad loss to all of us.”

* * *
The Associated Press and the Tulsa World contributed to this report.

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Conservation officials in B.C.’s central Interior are praising a mother who saved her young son from a cougar attack in a popular hiking area.

At approximately 4 p.m. Saturday, a mother and her two children were enjoying an afternoon hike near Pinnacles Provincial Park, just outside the city of Quesnel.

Officials say the cougar pounced suddenly on a seven-year-old boy, who was walking just ahead of his mother and little brother.

“He turned to look back at his mother and the cougar jumped on his back [and] knocked him to the ground,” said conservation officer Mike Krause.

“[The] mother, of course, immediately rushed in. The cougar saw the mother coming and immediately broke off the attack and … ran off.”

Another hiker stepped in and helped the family get away.

The little boy needed stitches for scratches to his cheek, ear and back, Krause said, adding, “Anybody that gets attacked by a cougar is lucky to come away with minor injuries.”

Rare incident

The park, approximately 120 kilometres south of Prince George, remained closed Wednesday while officials worked to track and capture the animal with snares and traps.

The attack and response happened so quickly, Krause said, the mother wasn’t able to give any details about the cougar, such as size or age.

Krause said officials don’t know why this cougar attacked, but they are praising the mother of the victim.

“She did what mothers will do and that’s protect their children … without hesitation,” Krause said.

Cougars are common in the area, he said, but attacks are rare.

“Particularly in the Quesnel area, this is the first recorded cougar attack on a human. It’s very rare.”

The family has asked that their name not be released.

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Conservation officers are warning British Columbians of the dangers of feeding wildlife following an attack on a Lower Mainland toddler by a coyote that had lost its fear of humans.

The girl, 2, suffered bites to the head and ear and minor scratches to her back during Monday’s attack at a playground in a Port Coquitlam school yard, before her parents were able to scare the animal away.

Provincial conservation officer Terry Myroniuk said agents later tracked and killed the animal. The contents of its stomach — chicken and mashed potatoes — confirmed it had been getting fed.

“What typically will happen is the animals will quite often lose their fear of humans and… approach humans in seeking out food — and this can sometimes result in unfortunate incidents,” Myroniuk said.

Feeding wild animals is an offence under the provincial Wildlife Act, Myroniuk pointed out, and the law is there for a reason.

“People who feed wildlife intend to help, but the practice instead puts the animals and the public in danger,” Myroniuk said.

“It’s not unusual for us to have coyotes existing in the Lower Mainland. But the behaviour that was exhibited by this animal — again, the lack of fear of humans, the lack of fear in actually approaching humans — is an indication that it had certainly been fed.”

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Officials advise caution in wake of rattlesnake bites

Health authorities in the sun-baked Interior are advising caution after three incidents of rattlesnake bites near Penticton in the last month.

Last week an Okanagan man was bitten on the ankle after stepping on a rattler in his backyard. After four days in intensive care and 40 vials of anti-venom, costing $1,000 each, his condition has stabilized.

Another person was bitten on the hand while out on a trail, and the other was bitten on the finger in a backyard.

On average there are five rattlesnake bites a year in B.C., and there have been two deaths in the province’s recorded history.

Rattlers reside on grassy hillsides in territory ranging from the southern Okanagan to the northern outskirts of Kamloops, and have come into increasing contact with humans owing to residential development.

Here are some tips from Interior doctors familiar with rattlesnake bites:

Keep in mind that the striking distance of a snake is about two-thirds its length. Do not pick up or handle snakes. Even a dead snake can bite and release venom through reflexes for 90 minutes after it dies.