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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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More Images »

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.

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Mom pulls three-year-old daughter from cougar’s grasp in Squamish

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE AND DARAH HANSEN, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 17, 2009 9:08 PM

METRO VANCOUVER — When Maureen Lee took her three-year-old daughter Maya salmonberry-picking along the Squamish River, she thought it would be a peaceful break from a day of packing for her family’s move to Mexico this weekend.

They were on a trail in Fisherman’s Park — about five minutes from their home in Squamish’s Brackendale neighbourhood — when Lee noticed movement in the bushes.

She thought it was a dog, but quickly realized it was a cougar.

The cat jumped onto Maya, pinned her in a fetal position and gripped her head with its claws, Lee said Wednesday, recounting the Tuesday evening attack.

“I just knew I had to get between them.”

Lee somehow wedged her slight frame between her daughter and the 80-pound male cougar, pushing him off Maya as she stood up. She grabbed Maya and ran.

“It was pure adrenalin and instinct,” Lee said. “I don’t think it was until I started running that the fear kicked in.”

As they ran, Maya, bleeding from her head and arm, kept repeating, “A bear got me. A bear got me.”

Lee didn’t turn back until she reached the safety of her neighbour’s house, who helped her stop Maya’s bleeding.

“Amazing,” Maya’s father, Pablo Espinosa, said of his wife’s actions. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

An ambulance took Maya to Squamish General Hospital where cuts on the right side of her head and her upper left arm were stitched up.

She appeared in good spirits Wednesday, even asking her mom to take her back down to the site of the attack.

“She’s very brave, but I can tell she was a bit shaken,” Lee said of Maya’s reaction to the visit. “I don’t want her to be afraid of the forest. I don’t want her to be afraid of picking berries. I want her to understand that this was a unique situation.”

The cougar drama will not change the family’s plans to relocate to Mexico on the weekend, she said.

Around 10 p.m. Tuesday, five conservation officers aided by five dogs found and killed the 18-month-old adult male cat that is suspected in the attack.

Squamish conservation officer Chris Doyle said from the animal’s outward appearance it appeared to be in good condition. However, a full necropsy has been ordered to help determine why the animal acted as it did.

Conservation officers continued to scout the neighbourhood with dog teams on Wednesday.

B.C. is home to about 4,000 to 6,000 cougars, but sightings of the elusive wild cat are “really, really unusual,” said Kyle Knopff, a PhD student at the University of Alberta who studies cougar behaviour. “In general they avoid people,” he said.

But Squamish has recently recorded an alarming spike in the number of encounters. In the past week and a half, Doyle said, 30 cougar sightings have been reported in the district, up from an average of two sightings over such a period.

Two dogs were attacked in separate incidents along the popular Chief Trail earlier this month. One of the dogs was killed when the cougar dragged it from its leash and carried it up a tree. The second dog was rescued by its owner.

In that case, conservation officers shot and killed a young female cougar, also about a year to 18 months old.

According to Doyle, that animal was in very poor health.

“It appeared she hadn’t fed for a while,” he said.

It’s not unusual for conservation officers to kill a cougar if the animal’s behaviour is deemed significantly abnormal or if the encounters reach a “high level of conflict,” Doyle said.

“If they are not in conflict, they are fairly secretive,” he added.

The high number of sightings has raised concern among Squamish residents, who’ve been told to stay alert on wooded trails and paths, and use particular caution when out with young children and pets.

Lee said she had heard about the cougar attacks on dogs and her mom had called her Tuesday morning to warn her — a warning that came back to haunt her as she ran to safety cradling Maya in her arms.

“As I was running, I thought of that. My mom’s going to kill me,” Lee said.

Neighbour Kelsey Wright said residents were walking around carrying cans and sticks to make noise with after the attack Tuesday night.

“It definitely makes you feel a little uneasy, but you can’t live your life in fear because of a cougar attack,” Wright said.

Kris Mazzotti, who lives a few doors down from Lee and Espinosa, taught her four-year-old son Joel what a cougar is and how to act if he sees one.

Mazzotti told Joel to be calm and not to run away, but she admits she would probably pick up her kids and run.

Some residents blame Olympics-related residential development in the area for the recent cougar problems.

“What is happening here was so predictable,” said Brian Vincent, a Squamish resident and communications director for an Oregon-based wildlife advocacy group, Big Wildlife.

“This was a sleepy little town for the longest time and didn’t have this problem. But because of the Olympics and all the construction for the Sea to Sky Highway and the rampant and uncontrolled housing development into wildlife habitat, these animals have become stressed,” he said.

Vincent urged local authorities and residents to avoid whipping up hysteria about the big cats.

However, Doyle said there are a number of reasons for the increase in cougar sightings, none of which have to do with development.

He said the cougars may be reacting to variations in the location and abundance of prey species, or it might be simple population dynamics.

The sightings and attacks may also be the result of young cougars leaving their mothers, he said.

He noted the recent sightings have all occurred in established residential or recreational areas, not in newly developed areas.

Knopff speculated that the two cougars that were killed were possibly siblings who came into the town limits in search of easy food. Young cougars, he said, “are definitely less effective predators. There is a learning curve, for sure.”

Knopff said spotting a cougar in its natural habitat is not cause for alarm, even if the animal is seen repeatedly.

However, a cougar that repeatedly approaches people in a threatening way, attacks pets while people are present, or attacks people is “certainly a problem.” “Such cougars must be dealt with,” he said.

According to Knopff, if you are attacked by a cougar, the best way to deter the animal is to aggressively fight back.

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Girl attacked by cougar in Brackendale, B.C.

Source: CBC News

Posted: 06/16/09 10:40PM

Filed Under: Canada

A three-year-old girl was attacked by a cougar in Brackendale, a community in the northern part of Squamish, B.C., early Tuesday evening.

Squamish is 60 kilometres north of Vancouver.

A helicopter evacuation to a Vancouver hospital was initiated, but later it was decided her injuries could be treated at the local hospital in Squamish.

RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie said the girl, who was attacked in Fisherman’s Park at 7 p.m. PT., is expected to recover.

The attack comes after conservation officers in the Squamish area warned hikers to keep an eye out for the large cats.

There were six attacks last Friday alone, including two on dogs. One dog was killed by a cougar, which was later destroyed by conservation officers.

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Lightning strike kills Mankota-area man, 28

REGINA — A 28-year-old man is dead and a 22-year-old woman is in hospital following a freak lightning strike on the weekend.

On Saturday about 5 p.m., the RCMP from the Ponteix detachment were called to a sudden death in an area about six kilometres south of Fir Mountain, located inside the Rural Municipality of Waverly in the southern part of Saskatchewan.

The male and the female, both from the the village of Mankota area, had been working on a barbed-wire fence.

Lightning had struck a point on the fence about 30 metres down the fence line from where the pair had been working, RCMP Cpl. Perry Pelletier said.

The electricity was conducted through the fence and down the line to the pair. The male is believed to have been killed instantly and was dead upon the RCMP’s arrival, while the female suffered injuries that required her to be transported first to hospital in Assiniboia and later to hospital in Moose Jaw.

“In this case, the weather wasn’t too bad and it could have been anybody down there,” Pelletier said. “So it was just one of those freak-type things, in my opinion. From what we gather, there was a thunderclap heard around the same time. There may have been a very light rain just around the same time.”

Pelletier said the RCMP’s ongoing investigation will include consultation with Environment Canada as to weather conditions at the time of the incident.