Looking for Alaska Page 5

  A few fifty-five-gallon oil drums were in the yard, most empty, a few filled with something. At a homestead out in the country almost nothing is thrown away. There will eventually be another use for whatever it is, even if it is five years from now. There were a couple piles of rough-cut corral pieces. Some car doors were lying in front of the corral, some old car engines on a rotting wood pallet. I also saw a couple long sections of fishing net hanging between two small spruce trees, and some salmon nets rolled up on racks.

  In the partially cleared woods in front of the log cabin were patches, mostly round, of bare dirt where their sled dogs were chained. When they had dug too many burrows, they were moved to another patch of ground. The dogs had obviously started near the house and were now being kept closer to the road. Sometimes they dug burrows under large roots, not unlike wolves, to make safe places for their puppies. Brown bears are known to dig up several-hundred-pound boulders to get to a ground squirrel; no burrow, no matter how deep, would protect any puppies or dogs from a hungry bear.

  “If I remember right, Brian and Lisa have one of the largest Great Pyrenees dogs I have ever seen. They let it run free, hoping that its guarding instincts would help against any invading bears, wolves, coyotes, wolverines, whatever. I don’t see it; last time I was here, it came bounding up to our car. It could be hiding, shivering in some corner of one of the outbuildings,” Ted said.

  I could feel a slightly out-of-control aura around the grounds and the house. Some broken plastic children’s toys were lying in grass that hadn’t been cut in a while. On the right side of the house rose a slight hill covered with a thick stand of white spruce and alder. Old and new bicycles were lying around, and some slab lumber that would someday be used for something. Ted and the others pulled up to the south side of the cabin and we all got out.

  Ted pointed out to me an outhouse-sized shed with a door built on the side of the cabin. “That’s what we call an arctic entry. No heat in it, just a place to step into when its way below zero, so as not to lose too much heat, plus you can take off and store all your bulky winter clothes in there.”

  As we walked up to it, the door opened and out stepped a thin, tired-looking woman, maybe in her late twenties to midthirties, with black hair. She seemed shy; she went back inside, and through the door we could see that on the walls of the arctic entry were many large nails with snow-machine suits, heavy coats, and boots.

  “You notice how their door swings out? You always want a door that swings out in bear country,” Ted said to me. He had the patience of a gifted teacher.

  Ted explained that normally if you surprised a bear on your front or back porch, say, eating your dog’s food, and you’re in close quarters, they will respond by either fighting or fleeing. Bear and moose will tolerate a human about thirty or forty yards away, but any closer and they will decide either to fight or flee. If a bear decides to fight and stands up and pushes on your door, as some will, if you have a door that opens in, then here comes the bear.

  Lisa came back out. “I had to tell my kids what was going on. They are still scared after what happened last night.”

  “I see.” Ted’s calm and orderly demeanor was immediately comforting to this woman. He did not have his rifle in his hands yet.

  “I need to keep an eye on the house and the kids. My husband had to go do something. None of us have ever experienced anything like last night. The sound that brown bear made, awful.” Lisa didn’t have much if any excess body fat. She shivered slightly at times, and it didn’t seem to have anything to do with being chilled by the warming air.

  Two broad-winged, black-black ravens soared over and spoke to each other. They circled over the woods near the dogs. Did they see something? It is uncanny how quickly ravens arrive at places of injury, death, and food.

  “Last night was terrible and we still don’t know what has happened. None of us was going out there after all that happened, after all we heard,” she said.

  As I looked over at a side window on the log cabin, two children’s faces stared at us from behind a curtain.

  “So what did happen?” Ted asked, speaking gently so as to not rekindle the emotions. Ted and all the men seemed quite serious. They knew this family and knew they had experienced something serious here last night.

  “First our dogs woke us up barking. We had a couple sled dogs chained out there,” she answered, pointing to the woods.

  “The first barking, that was nothing too unusual. My Great Pyrenees, he runs loose, we want it that way. He can scare off most things, and he’s smart, he won’t let them draw him too far away from the house.”

  The official book of the American Kennel Club speaks glowingly of the Great Pyrenees: “Perhaps no other breed can boast such a colorful history of association with, and service to, mankind through as many centuries as can this breed.… Armed by nature with a long, heavy coat which rendered him invulnerable against attack except from the point of the chin and the base of the brain, the Pyrenees dog was an almost unbeatable foe which won such glory and fame as a vanquisher of wolves and bears that he became known as the Pyrenean wolf dog or hound, and the Pyrenean bearhound.”

  None of their dogs were making any sound now. Yet shouldn’t they have been barking as we five strange men surrounded their female master?

  “Were all your other dogs chained?” Ted asked.

  “I think I see all the dogs but the Pyrenees,” she replied haltingly.

  I wondered how she could have had five children already, she looked so young.

  “Before we go looking around, just tell me what else happened last night.” Ted reached out his right hand toward her without touching her. She seemed to be having trouble getting the whole story out.

  “The dogs’ barking, they were all going nuts out here, and they wouldn’t stop, that woke us all up. Usually our kids can sleep through anything. This woke them all up. Their fear made it all worse, that’s for sure.”

  The shaded air was damp, so we stepped out into the sunlight.

  “My husband, he went outside. I’m sure he was hoping it was something stupid like a porcupine too close. My Pyrenees is way too smart to mess with a porcupine, but not the huskies. Some of them don’t have the greatest brainpower.” She brushed her hair back from her dark eyes.

  “And what happened then?” Ted asked.

  “Well, right before he got out of the house, there was this awful noise, a different sound, coming from down in the dog yard.” She pointed in front of us. “Brian said there were some bears out there. It was just getting the slightest bit light, so he couldn’t see much but some shadows. The sound was so loud it was like they, the dogs and the bears, were in the house with us.” One of the older kids opened the arctic entry door. She told him to get back inside.

  “Anyway, Brian ran in and got his rifle [which we learned was a .444 Marlin lever action], didn’t say anything, just ran back outside. Before he got to the front of the house, I heard something that … I didn’t want to show how afraid it made me, the kids were looking at me.” She appeared to be having a hard time standing out here with us while her kids were inside, yet she wouldn’t call them outside, either.

  “I heard my husband shoot—that gun of his is so loud—once, maybe twice. After that it got quiet; my husband ran back inside. He said he could not see much but dark shadows and some blurred movement. He said he thought one of the bears had been fighting with one of the huskies. Fight would be the wrong word, though, when they’re chained.” Her eyes grew sadder.

  “Then, right when my husband got back inside, that’s when the sounds I’d never heard before started coming through the walls of the house. This sound was something else. I guess it was one of the bears, but, man, was it intense and unusual.” Lisa reached down to pick up one of her cats. Petting it seemed to soothe her nerves. The cat did not purr.

  “This bear was alternating between growling, this terrifying growl, and then roaring, a sound I have never heard anywhere in all my years liv
ing in the wilderness of Alaska. Then the kids started; first one of the older ones began crying.

  “My husband, he went back outside to see if he could scare the bear or bears off. As he rounded the front corner of the house, a bear charged him. It wasn’t slowing down either. He ran back inside the house.” A Steller’s jay, a deep blue in the sunlight and colorless in the shade, flew harmlessly through the area of their yard where we were gathered.

  “Did he shoot again, that time?” Ted wondered.

  “No, he didn’t have time. Then that bear began making this other awful moaning sound. It sounded like it was walking up the hill and down the hill back to the house, over and over again, filling the woods and all our ears with that terrible moaning roar.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have done in their situation, especially knowing the couple of brown bear stories I did. I’d heard about one instance where a sow and her two cubs tore four-by-eight-foot sheets of the strongest plywood off the outside of a cabin to get in. These extremely tough plywood sheets had been screwed into the stud walls, not nailed, making them even harder to remove. And then there was the brown bear who climbed through a double-pane window, cut itself up, bled all over, tore apart everything in the cabin, crushing metal cans as if they were nothing, then went out another double-pane window, bleeding all the way. What pain tolerance and outrageous strength these animals must have.

  “I have never ever heard anything like the sound that bear was making after my husband shot. It was not only the roar and the growling anymore. I can’t tell you what it was like.” Her body seemed to tighten and twist with memory of it.

  “I’m not sure I have ever heard about a bear making all the kinds of sounds you’re talking about. And the fact that it kept walking up the hill and coming back to your house and yard, that’s unusual,” Ted said.

  “It seemed every time that bear came down the hill towards the house, that horrible sound was more intense, louder.” She glanced back toward her house; now the whole bottom of one of the larger windows was filled with her children’s faces.

  “All right, we’re going to see if we can figure out what happened here, see if your husband shot a bear or wounded one. Or, maybe the bears killed something,” Ted said in the measured tones of law enforcement.

  Ted pulled back the bolt of his rifle and put a bullet into the chamber. I wondered what would get him charged up. I was the only one without a weapon, so I decided to stay as close to Ted as I could without invading his space. I also remembered the joke about being in bear country: “Always be with someone who runs slower than you do.” I doubted I could run faster than Ted, but hoped I could beat at least one of the others.

  “I think you should go on inside with your kids and stay there until I, or one of us, comes back.” She did as Ted asked, stepping quickly.

  We walked across the yard down a slight incline; cut-off stumps were here and there and a couple of old dog water dishes. There was bare dirt when we got close to where the huskies were supposed to be chained. When we got within twenty yards, something with fur stood up. If I’d had a gun, I would have drawn down on it. It was one of the dogs, a thin husky. It slinked toward us. When I reached out to pet it, it looked up at me with what seemed to be intense fear, but not of being struck by a human. It wanted my attention, my hand.

  “Look, over there,” Larry Lewis said. In the dark shade was an old, dirty towel or some crumpled, light yellow blanket the kids had dragged out here while playing with the dogs. Lisa did say her kids loved all their dogs, that they were gentle. As we got closer, it looked like a big clump of lamb’s wool. Oh, no, is it her Great Pyrenees? It was; it lay rigid, all four legs straight out. There was no doubt it was dead.

  We walked over to it. The other four guys had their rifles ready, walking as if they were in a Vietnam movie, stalking through the jungle: eyes up, heads moving from side to side, gun moving from side to side, slowly, deliberately. One or two of them always kept their head up, looking, revolving, and watching for a possible charge of a bear.

  There, stiffened by death, was the Great Pyrenees. The midpoint of its back was soaked with blood. This dog had to weigh 125 pounds, maybe close to 150. I’d never seen one larger.

  Ted leaned down; at this, the other three turned to the outside facing all directions, ready. He ran his hand down the dog’s backbone.

  “What has happened here, I’m quite sure, is that a large adult bear, probably our sow, grabbed this dog by its back, picked it off the ground in its mouth, and with one bite, killed it.”

  The smell of several dogs living in close proximity was strong. I smelled for bear scent, not that I would know it. I was searching for any kind of warning.

  “Probably, one of the sow’s cubs or both came in here harassing these dogs, maybe thinking of trying to kill one, and the mama came in when this Great Pyrenees came over to protect his friends. These are some damn tough dogs, and this one was not even chained up. These bears are fearsome predators.”

  Ted stood up and began walking toward the hill; a trail went up it, maybe a moose trail. On either side of the trail grew patches of devil’s club, dense brush, ferns, spruce whose branches grew all the way to the ground. Bears could be lying anywhere. The men walked slowly and deliberately, each trying to keep his own sphere of view and his own shooting lane. A bear could be on one of them in an instant.

  We hadn’t gone twenty-five yards when Larry stopped, ahead of Ted and me. He put his rifle to his shoulder and motioned to us. He was looking down. I saw some brown fur, medium brown, and some mosquitoes hovering around the still body. It was a year-and-a-half-old brown bear cub, maybe 125 pounds, dead. It looked at peace; there was no blood, but Brian’s single bullet had found its mark in the shadows of a dark summer night. Among the men, there was no excited chest pounding, no glad-it-got-shot statement. Instead there was a heavy feeling, more of a sorrow for the two lives that had been taken last night.

  Ted and Larry dragged the dead bear toward Brian and Lisa’s cabin. Ted went over and knocked on the door, and Lisa came out with a baby in her arms. He said something to her; she went back inside and came out alone.

  Ted took her to the dead bear first. She stood over it, silent, rubbed her tired eyes, and folded her thin arms over her chest.

  “This is so sad. No wonder that sow was making those awful noises for so long after my husband shot. This is why she was running up the hill and then came back down, roaring and making that unreal noise. Maybe that’s the sound a bear makes when it is crying.”

  Ted explained the state law to her, which she knew, but he had to say it anyway: “Have Brian skin out the bear and bring me the hide, claws attached, and the skull to the office as soon as he can. Sorry about your dog.” He pointed to where her beloved dog lay. She shook her head; she couldn’t look at it right now. She walked with us back to where our trucks were parked and stood by Ted’s, looking off toward the woods, where so many creatures live. This family is surrounded by everything but other humans, and that’s the way they liked it. Most of the time.

  EXTREMELY RARE

  Some believe that bears like this sow that come in and kill dogs or tear apart buildings and destroy property do it more than once. Ted investigated two of the three killings of humans by bears on the Kenai in the last thirty years. The following is a report done by Ted on the February 8, 1998, fatality.

  From: Spraker, Ted

  Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 1998, 1:47 P.M.

  To: Bartley, Bruce

  Cc: Del Frate, Gino

  Subject: Feb. report

  An extremely rare, fatal brown bear mauling occurred February 8, 1998, on Kenai Peninsula. The victim was a forty-year male employed by Northern Seismic Company from Anchorage. A second person, working on the same crew, was chased but avoided injury by climbing a tree. Reports from the two workers that witnessed the attack revealed there was no warning except one growl as the man was attacked, and that the mauling lasted less than one minute. The vic
tim was the fourth man in the crew, spaced approximately two-hundred feet apart along the seismic line.

  This incident occurred on a Sunday afternoon, and Ted Spraker was notified by staff from Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Since this mauling resulted in a fatality, there were still ninety-plus employees working in the area, the bear could be identified by tracking, and a harvestable surplus of brown bear exists on the Kenai, the decision was made to shoot the bear as a public safety precaution if it could be found. An additional concern was the building local sentiment against this bear and a sense that the local public would shoot any bear they see this spring. The fury surrounding this incident will probably be gone before other bears emerge from their dens, but if not, it was believed that innocent bears may be killed if this bear was not. A thorough search, starting the following morning by Spraker and Kris Hundertmark, revealed that the bear moved at least three miles away from the site of the mauling. Tracks followed on Monday were not fresh and appeared to have been made the previous day. The last tracks found indicated the bear entered an undeveloped six to eight square miles of dense, mature spruce timber. Since the bear had moved away from the seismic work area, it was not tracked with the intention of killing it beyond this point.

  Although the reason for this attack will never be fully understood, at least several logical assumptions exist. First, the bear had a nine-inch-wide front paw print, indicating it was a large animal, especially for the Kenai. The length of its stride and the fact that it broke through hard-crusted snow in a track made by a snow machine also suggest a large bear. From the indications of size it is reasonable to assume this was an adult male. The fact that it stayed in heavy cover from the mauling site to the last tracks also suggest an animal with learned experience rather than a juvenile. The bear’s den was appropriately large, measuring three feet across a western-facing opening with a seven-foot-round chamber. The den was made in a good site for cover (primarily dense young birch) but the slope did not allow for a deep den. Because of the shallow slope and shallow snow cover, the den entrance caved in exposing the front edge of the chamber, and the bear. The bear had not been out of the den prior to the attack. The den site was revisited four days after the mauling and there was no evidence of the animal’s return.