AUDIO: MAN ATTACKED BY GRIZZLY BEAR, TWICE
50-year-old Todd Orr was enjoying a solo hike Saturday near Ennis, Montana, when he was attacked by a grizzly bear. Bitten and bleeding, Orr managed to start back down the trail toward his truck – only to be attacked again by the same bear a few minutes later. The encounter left him mangled and drenched in blood, but alive. Orr took a selfie video explaining the attack. He’s covered in blood, but gives himself a brief physical, saying, “Legs are good, internal organs are good, eyes are good. I just walked out three miles and now I’ve got to go to the hospital.” In a lengthy Facebook post Sunday, Orr described the previous day’s attacks. “Knowing that bears are common throughout southwest Montana, I hollered out ‘hey bear’ about every 30 seconds so as to not surprise any bears along the trail,” he wrote. When he stumbled upon the grizzly and her two cubs, he gave the same call, but the grizzly charged him anyway. She blew clean through his cloud of bear spray, he said, and knocked him to the ground. Orr lay face down and protectively wrapped his arms around the back of his neck. “She was on top of me biting my arms, shoulders and backpack. The force of each bite was like a sledge hammer with teeth,” he wrote. “She would stop for a few seconds and then bite again. Over and over. After a couple minutes, but what seemed an eternity, she disappeared.” Orr started making his way back down the trail. He didn’t want to stop to examine his wounds until he was sure he was safe, he said. After a few minutes, he said, he heard the grizzly behind him once more. To his horror, the bear once again pounced. “I couldn’t believe this was happening a second time! Why me?” he wrote. “She slammed down on top of me and bit my shoulder and arms again. One bite on my forearm went through to the bone and I heard a crunch,” he wrote. “I didn’t move. She suddenly stopped and just stood on top of me,” he continued. “I will never [forget] that brief moment. Dead silence except for the sound of her heavy breathing and sniffing.” Orr said he lay like this until the bear finally stepped off him and disappeared into the woods once more. When Orr finally made it back to his truck, he filmed a short video describing his wounds. Then he drove himself to Madison Valley Medical Center in Ennis.
* Holy Revenant!
* And then the bear took his $4 million engagement ring and millions of dollars in jewelry. It was last seen heading in the direction of Paris.
* Other that that, how was the hike?
* “Knowing that bears are common throughout southwest Montana …” he should have stayed home.
* I question the wisdom of yelling out “Hey bear” every 30 seconds so the bear can zero in on your position.
* I may be wrong, but if you holler out, “Hey bear, please don’t eat me!” wouldn’t that be better?
* The bear spray didn’t work against a charging grizzly? Why am I not surprised by that?
* That stuff sounds right up there with shark repellant.
* Suddenly, clowns in the woods don’t seem so bad.
* You know how movie sequels say, “This time it’s personal”? Well, you could say that about the second bear attack: “This time it’s personal.”
* Meanwhile the cubs are thinking, “Mom’s such a bad ass.” Of course, a bad ass bear would have finished him off.
* This is why I only go hiking with a bazooka.
CLIP: Todd Orr describes his injuries in the video.
