Bear Attacks of the Century: True Stories of Courage and Survival [Paperback]

"When it's a bear attack, people bend every rule in the book," says Dr. William Wennen, a trauma/plastic surgeon in Fairbanks, Alaska, who has reconstructed a majority of Alaska's bear attack victims.

Wennen is a recurring character -- a just-this-side-of-the-pearly-gates vision in a white coat -- in a graphic collection of true bear attack stories compiled by Illinois outdoor writer Larry Mueller and Marguerite Reiss, who spent many years in Alaska and now resides in Lansing.

"Bear Attacks of the Century" certainly bears out Wennen's remark. As these harrowing first-person tales attest, bear attacks provoke exceptional behavior. Heroic friends somehow manage to move mauled victims out of remote areas. Intrepid pilots fly the injured through dangerous storms and mists to the nearest hospital. The victims themselves perform feats of survival they never would have thought possible back home in the La-Z-Boy.

In the same spirit, the reader, desperately hooked on these Spillane-terse survival shockers, ignores every rational impulse and keeps turning the pages, driven by sheer adrenaline. In your corner literary salon, "Bear Attacks" readers can always be discerned by their pale complexion, bug eyes, clenched teeth, shifting buttocks and constant shouts of "Oh Jesus!"

The beasts in question aren't the cute, bouncing black bears of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but the 600-pound grizzlies and 900-pound coastal brown bears that inhabit remote areas of Alaska by the thousands.

These bears have ruled their world for millennia, feasting on berries, salmon, deer, elk, caribou and whatever else they survey from the summit of the food chain.

A combination of high intelligence and hellish ferocity distinguishes them from, say, sharks, who seem like mere mechanical blades with fins by comparison. A bear can sit on a rock and wait you out while you decide which (wrong) move to make, or come at you all at once like a furry, stink-breathing tornado. With a running speed of 35 miles per hour, a half-ton brown bear sow can cover the 40 yards between you and her cubs in a little over a second. How's that rifle arm?

Perhaps more importantly, how big is your rifle? "If a brown bear attacks," says an Alaska public safety officer in one story, "the best thing you can do with a .357 [handgun] is to stick it in your mouth and pull the trigger." Even a heart-shot bear can run another 100 yards and exact terrible revenge.

The book's attack sequences vividly recreate what must be the most extreme trauma nature can visit upon intruding humans. (Squeamish readers may want to turn to the horoscope page.) Typically, a bear will begin an attack by sinking its canines into the buttocks, shaking the victim like a cat shakes a mouse. One hapless hunter, in a rare bit of comic relief, gets his cowboy hat knocked off before the bear goes to work on him. Others end up with hands, feet, ears, even kneecaps bitten off -- or almost off.

Bears also like to bite into heads. Dangling scalps and popped-out eyeballs are a recurring theme here. One victim finds a hooded sweatshirt handy for keeping his head together, literally.

The only defense for an unarmed person, say the authorities, is to play dead. But it's not easy to keep from twitching or coughing with a leg turned around or a mouth full of pine needles. In the book's most agonizing passages, traumatized, pain-wracked victims tilt their head ever so slightly to see if the bears are finally gone, only to attract another round of savage attacks.

Usually, bears attack humans only to defend cubs or lay claim to a kill. When bears attack for food, it's actually a lucky break for the victim, because they like to bury the meat in leaves and wait for it to turn rancid, allowing time for the meal to crawl off to safety and buy into a time-share in Miami Beach.

The prose in "Bear Attacks" is far too lean to push Hemingway-esque machismo or guilt-ridden environmentalism. For the most part, it's straight-up, scary stories around the campfire.

There is, however, a frustratingly contradictory primer on how to deal with bears at the end of the book. Make noise or don't make noise? Challenge or don't challenge? Get away or stay put? The answer, unfortunately, is "it depends," and chances are you won't have time to parse the behavioral niceties of man-bear relations before teeth meet bone.

That brings "Bear Attacks" down to a simple, hard lesson on the unpredictability of life, as embodied in the book's most poignant sentence:

"This had been such a pleasant day, and the meadow was in view."

This you'll want to read in one sitting. Amazing stories of human courage (most of the time). Interesting tips on what to do and not do, but bears are unpredictable, which the stories tell.

Exciting and thought provoking. Very informative, teaches you how to be prepared when in bear country. Teaches you what NOT to do when in bear country. A book of true survival stories you'll never forget! Once I started reading, I couldn't hardly put it down and almost finished it in the first reading! Have read it through, twice. If you like stories of courage and survival, this is a MUST HAVE! Larry Mueller tells it like no one else can.

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