Bear attack kills man near Yellowstone park

A man was killed early this morning by a bear in the Soda Butte campground in Montana, near Yellowstone National Park.

Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was dragged 25 feet from his tent and left for dead at the edge of the campground, an official said.

Not too far away, Deb Freele, 58, of London, Ontario, awoke to a bear, possibly the same bear, biting deep into her arm. She survived.

Woman plays dead. Reuters reports:

“I thought I would be dinner,” said Deb Freele, who recalled awakening from a deep sleep in her tent to find a bear chewing on her arm.

“Within hundredths of seconds, I felt the teeth in my arm, heard bones breaking. I screamed and that seemed to aggravate him. He sunk his teeth into me again,” she recounted in a telephone interview from her hospital room in Cody, Wyoming.

“So I decided to play dead and mean it,” she said, adding that when she did, the bear, which she believed was a grizzly, let go and lumbered away.

Unlike the cartoons. Another camper, Ronald Singer, 21, of Alamosa, Colo., was bitten on the calf of his leg.

A month ago, Erwin Evert, 70, a hiking botanist, was killed by a grizzly bear in Kitty Creek, also not far from Yellowstone.

These bears certainly aren’t like the Yogi and Boo Boo I remember.

Frank Warner

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Update: Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials appear to have found the grizzly bear, a mama bear, who killed Kammer and attacked the others. She has a chipped tooth that matches a tooth fragment found in the campground.

Comments

[George]

There is a video with what I believe may be the same bear: Bear video

[Kevin]

Hey, I have a novel idea for how to fix this problem. Kill all bears. Let's not stop there, though.

- Kill all grizzly bears.
- Kill all black bears.
- Kill all lions.
- Kill all polar bears.
- Kill all tigers.
- Kill all pumas.
- Kill all mountain lions.
- Kill all Kodiak bears.
- Kill all wild alligators and crocodiles.
- Kill all hyenas.

It makes no sense to keep man-eating animals alive. We have long since usurped their purpose. Sure, keep a few dozen alive in zoos. Or not. Either way is fine by me, as long as they all become dead in the wild.

Also pelicans. We should kill all of those flying rats too. But that's just a personal vendetta.

[Kevin]

*sigh* So no one's backing me on my plan to kill all pelicans? It seems like such a good idea. I don't know why it gets so little support. It seems like the only people who like pelicans are people who've never met one.

Oh yeah, and those man-eating animals too. Let's rub them out once we fix the pelican problem.

[Neo]

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