hi,
eine schlagzeile aus der anchorage daily news:
Soldotna-area jogger survives bear attack
MAULING: Victim badly injured but expected to recover after stumbling onto two bears near moose carcass.
A regular morning jog around a subdivision near Soldotna went badly wrong for 51-year-old Scott MacInnes on Monday when he stumbled into two bears near the half-eaten carcass of a moose.
One or both of the bears knocked MacInnes to the ground and seriously mauled him but broke off the attack. MacInnes was able to make it to a nearby house and ask for help.
He was in surgery at Central Peninsula General Hospital on Monday afternoon.
"He'll recover,'' said sister Ann Mize of Anchorage. "He's lucky to be alive. He'll be in the hospital for at least a week.''
MacInnes was bitten in the abdomen, about the head, neck and face, and in the leg. The abdominal injury at first appeared the most serious, Mize said, but everyone breathed a sigh of relief after doctors concluded MacInnes had suffered no life-threatening internal injuries.
"They've been spending quit a bit of time in (surgery) in the neck and jaw area,'' Mize said. "I think they've discovered more things as time went by. They'll have to do some skin grafts on his leg.''
Thus officials of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Alaska State Troopers were struggling to determine how he became the victim of a near fatal mauling.
"He was out on his daily, neighborhood run,'' Mize said.
Apparently, said Jeff Selinger, a Kenai Peninsula wildlife biologist with Fish and Game, that run took Mac-Innes and his retriever-sized dog into a surprise, close-range encounter with two bears that were either coming from or going to a moose carcass in the Mackey Lakes area. Mackey Lakes are just north and east of the developed commercial area where the Sterling Highway meets the Kenai Spur Road.
Wildlife biologists have not confirmed whether the animals were black bears or grizzlies, but it appears from the size of the tracks and the ferocity of the attack that they were the latter, Selinger said.
Bears are just emerging from their dens across Alaska, and with few greens yet available to eat, the animals seek the remains of winter-killed animals.
"I don't know how (MacInnes) was jogging,'' Selinger added, "but I see runners all the time out on back roads jogging with headsets on. I can understand that's a lot of people's release. (But) anywhere in Alaska, you should be keeping your wits about you ... you can run up on moose as well as bears.''
Judging from the tracks found in snow near the attack, Selinger said, this pair was most likely a sow grizzly with "at least a yearling (cub) with it."
Sow grizzlies are extremely protective of their young -- even cubs almost grown -- and equally protective of any spring food they have found.
About 100 to 150 feet from where the attack took place, Selinger said, biologists found what appeared to be a winter-killed moose. It was not visible from the road. A bear or bears had obviously been feeding on it, Selinger added, but there is no way of knowing if they were the bears that attacked MacInnes.
"It was hard to tell, but it didn't look like (the bears) came charging out of the trees after this guy,'' Selinger said.
Judging from tracks left in what Selinger described as "wet, light snow,'' the biologist said, "as best we can tell, the bear was on the road when it came after him.''
MacInnes was jogging with his dog, but Selinger said there is no way of knowing if it contributed to the attack or helped its owner.
"It could have been the dog ran the bear off the guy,'' Selinger said; the dog and bear tracks in the area were in such a jumble it was hard to say what happened. He did note that the dog tracks did not go all the way to the moose carcass.
That seemed to rule out the possibility the dog had gone to investigate the smelly carcass and returned to Mac-Innes with a bear in pursuit -- a scenario about which Alaska bear authorities regularly warn pet owners.
"The tracks for the bear weren't right on the dog tracks either,'' said Selinger, who would have expected any dog-chasing bear to be right on the dog's tail.
Mize said she isn't sure what happened to the dog after the attack but by the time she'd made her way from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula, someone had caught the animal and locked it up safe in MacInnes' home on Denise Lake Drive near Soldotna.
nehmt warnungen ernst - bären sind keine killermaschinen, aber einen angriff überlebt man trotzdem nur mit viel glück !!  gespeichert
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