It’s all very well to be an animal lover. some people have many favorites, while others do not share their love as freely. Choosing one or two select animals to top their list. However, it is an entirely different thing if your favorite animal has the potential to kill you with one swipe of its claws. One man met his fate, and it was by the jaws of his favorite animal, the grizzly bear. He was mauled to death in front of his girlfriend on his 13th annual trip to Alaska.
Frequent visits
The bear lover known as the Grizzly Man was named Timothy Treadwell. He was absolutely obsessed with bears, grizzly bears to be exact. For 13 years before he passed, he would fly out to Alaska to camp out in the wilderness amongst the bears. He was extremely passionate about the bears, and despite the numerous warnings from his friends and family, nothing could stop him from spending time with his beloved, salmon-loving grizzly friends. Except maybe the bear itself.
Tragedy struck
Timothy and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were on his annual trip to Alaska. This was his 13th mission to the wilderness, and he did not expect anything to go awry. However, his worst nightmare and least expected this happened. While he was filming footage of a bear they encountered, it turned on him. The bear mauled used his claws and jaws and mauled him to death. This all happened right in front of his girlfriend. She filmed the entire thing, in a state of complete shock. Once the bear was done with Timothy, the footage shows how it turned onto Amie, who then met the same fate.
The couple had chosen a remote spot in the mountains of Alaska. They would get there by plane, and their pilot was a man named Willy Fulton. When he came back to pick them up at the spot they arranged, Timothy and Amie were not there. This was a red flag for Willy because they were always waiting on the shore for him.
The Grizzly Man
Timothy Treadwell had been filming the bears in the moments before the attack. That meant the camera was still recording during the attack. There were six minutes of audio recorded that would send chills down anyone’s spine. A few years later, a documentary producer, Werner Herzog, created a biography about Timothy, leading up to his death in 2003. He called it, The Grizzly Man.
As nature would have it, this is not the only person to be killed by a bear. In fact, another bear attack comes to mind. Two college wrestlers, Kendall Cummings and Brady Lowry, were out hunting in Shoshone National Forest. They came across the droppings of a bear and immediately called their other team mates. They had set out as a group of four, but had been separated along the way.
The other two were now on lower ground and ooblivious to the bear. Lowry was attacked first and Cummings tried to stop the bear by grabbing him. This made the bear turn on him. They managed to get away from the bear, and ran bloodied down the hill towards their friends, Harrison and Jackson. Luckily, they did not suffer any life threatening injuries, although the same cannot be said for their mental trauma.