Here's what Yahoo News put up today:
Caught on Tape: Grizzly Bear Charges Photographers - Yahoo!
PS: I did a grad degree on problem polar and grizz bears and their aggressive behavior around people and oil rigs, pipelines etc. etc.
SO.. the media description here is: "Incredible video shows massive bear charging at photographers in the wild."
So natch, I checked it out and what do I, as an expert, see here?
One... Look closely. Watch it, read this, then watch it again. The bear is just sauntering along minding his own bear's-iness, but then he suddenly turns and runs away... from...? He is also a long ways away from the fishermen here. See the telegraphic lens retraction going on here? He's at least 75 yds away to begin with. At least!
Two... He's OBVIOUSLY responding to
something [or, as Willima Shatner would say:
SOME.......THING!!!] in the bushes ahead of him. Plus, he ain't no MASSIVE Grizz bear! More like your typical smallish, leanish 320 - 380 lb male, maybe 1.5 to two years of age or so... He's what we bear biologists call a
"sub-adult" juvie, a sort of out-of-place and not yet socially adjusted teenaged bear!
So he's been bumped around for most of his life since momma kicked him out-the nest, so to speak. Fact is he's rather easily frightened at this time in his life! Fortunately there's a
lot of salmon available in these Alaskan streams
Three.. So then he runs, coincidentally, towards the home video person, but hey: his ears are up, not down, with no jaw
clump-clumping, with spittle foam dripping out the sides [
NOT a good sign, btw... get away if that's happening...] They do this
whenever they are
really pissed-off, threatened by you, or just plain nasty-aggressive and aiming it towards you..). He's almost facing backwards then, and what else does he do?
Why, he keeps looking over his shoulder, prob'bly looking for that particulary bully-ish big old boar-male that's been on his case for the past 4 weeks...
Four... Then, even though he's supposedly and apparently in the throws of an aggressive attack, he stops, looks back again (perhaps he feels safer near those nice human people? After all, he thinks, "sometimes that nice smiling lady fisherperson over there even leaves him a nice tuna-fish sam-ich! Or, like last week when she even left him some beer and chips!"). But then, ears all up and stuff, he quite casually shakes the water off his back! And then rambles closer to those people, about which he is entirely non-plussed. Heck; he already knows who'd win in
that confront, eh?
All of this is not what a bear ever does just before feasting on your left femur! Unless... hmmm... maybe he simply wants to wash up before din-dins? A fastidious grizz kid? Hee Hee.
So then, after he feels safe with his human friends (and after all, there's no tartar sauce to eat with them, and they
are all wrapped up in that damned GoreTex™; it's like trying to eat that tuna-fish sammy with the Cling-Wrap still on it...)
And that woman's smiling face in the last few seconds? See how terrified she is? PS: she probably personally
knows ol' blue eyes here, and talks to him affably when they both come here every few days to mutually go fishin' tuh-gether! In fact, it looks like, in the last few seconds of this startling home vid, that he's going to graze on something on the beach. Probably a
luverly two-day-old old fish head or the like. Starving? Not BL**%y likely!
"Well, see you tomorrow, Blackie, OK? Have a good night, but watch out for old Sore Butt back there!"
And this is
cutting-edge media? OK then... so.. what can we also say about their compelling in-depth coverage of, oh... the Middle East sitch? Or the goings-on in Washington, DC?
Cue the dramatic News Flash Musak:
"Today some highly aggressive Democrats/Republicans charged each other in Congress, looking for fresh new blood to spill!" 
Yup.
Nighty night all!
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Good Bart Bear! Don't eat the film star!
