Grizzly Man Last night James and I watched “Grizzly Man” on Discovery Channel. This is a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the man who for 13 summers, cavorted with grizzly bears in the Alaska wilderness.

I remember hearing when Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Heuguenard were found to have been devoured by a bear, and thinking “what the fuck were they thinking!?” Despite my great love of bears, I don’t think I’d be crazy enough to go live among them to get to know them better. After watching the documentary; written and directed by Werner Herzog, I have a somewhat better understanding of what the fuck they were thinking, but I still reserve the right to think they were perhaps slightly crazy!

Timothy Treadwell was a failed actor, an alcoholic, and very likely bi-polar. There is an interview with former girlfriend Jewel Palovak, where she states that for a short time he had been medicated to regulate his “up and down emotions”. This to me screams bi-polar, and after seeing a bit more of his “ups and downs” and a rant or two on his video diaries, I should think that had been his diagnosis, although I can’t recall that it was mentioned on the voice over by Herzog. Palovak mentions that Tim had said to her he couldn’t take the medications because his ups and downs are what made him “him”, and he didn’t like that middle ground of moderate mood, he preferred the off the wall.

While I admire his gumption to live among the bears, I would dearly love to do this myself, I think he was crazy, or at very least, stupid, to do so as he did. He not only flouted the rules of the national park rangers, he flouted the rules of nature. Sure, it would be awesome to be able to get so close to a wild grizzly that you could reach out and tweek her nose, but I’m not stupid enough to do it! I would love to bathe with the bears in an arctic lake, painful as that sounds!, but I’m not stupid or crazy enough to do it. Tim Treadwell was, and his girlfriend Amie was along for the ride for the last 3 of his “expeditions”. Their friends say she was an experienced outdoors person, but she hated and feared bears. She loved Tim so thoroughly she set aside her fears and joined him for a few weeks each summer. The things we do for love eh?

What gets me is that Treadwell claimed to be going on these “expeditions” so that he could protect the bears. And yet, in all of his video footage shown, I cannot recall even once where he did anything even remotely protective to or for them. Unless he considers telling them incessantly that he loves them to be protective?! That was his defense if any bear came too close or threatened him; he would say to it “its ok, I love you; I love you; I love you; its ok”. Oddly, it seems to have worked for 13 years, though I wouldn’t recommend anyone else try it! He claimed to be there to save the bears from poachers, but when we see him come across some “poachers” he does nothing but crouch in the brush and cry when they start throwing stones at one of “his” bears. From what we could see on the video, they were armed with nothing but cameras and stones. How he considered them poachers I don’t know. He later accuses them of threatening his life, when they leave notes for him on a fallen log “Hello Treadwell, we’ll see you in Summer 2001”. Personally, I see that as a “sorry we missed you, catch you next year”, he saw it as a threat to his life. And his friends say he wasn’t paranoid!

Later he shows us a stone with a happy face drawn on it, which he also tells us is a threat from the “poachers”. He says that where he found the happy face is where his barrels of food had been stacked, it is unclear, to me at least I may have missed something, if the “poachers” stole his food and left nothing but the smiley face, or if he moved his food barrels before he took the video of the smiley. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he put it there himself, and the poacher story was concocted.

There is an interview with (I think) a park ranger, who says that poaching isn’t such a problem to the bears as Treadwell makes it out to be. Statistically anyway. After the documentary showed, Discovery channel ran a ‘with the friends of Timothy” review, and former girlfriend Palovak surmised that Timothy *had* been protecting the bears; that for the entire 13 years he spent in Alaska, not a single bear had been poached; the year following his death; 6 bears were found dead in the wilderness. We see one such “poached” bear, rotting and decomposed, which she claimed was killed by poachers. Other than a missing foot however, there is no real evidence that it did not die from natural causes. Its just a rotting carcass in the wilderness. Of which I’m sure there are thousands. For Treadwell to have protected the bears for 13 years, and to claim not a single one in all those summers died, is stretching it quite a bit. The Alaskan wilderness is incredibly vast, I find it *very* hard to believe that Treadwell’s very presence could protect the entirety of it. I begin to wonder if it wasn’t just Treadwell who was a bit off his nut…

There is a scene in Palovak’s home, where director/writer Herzog is listening to the tape of the actual bear attack on Tim and Amie. We see just the side of Herzog’s head, not his expression, and we see the expression on Palovak’s face. It is obvious that she, at that time, had not yet listened to the tape herself. Herzog’s body language quickly becomes agitated and stressed, and he asks her to turn off the tape. He takes off the headphones and tells her to never ever listen to the tape, and suggests that she just destroys it, it is that horrifying. This is the most emotional part of the documentary, Jewel chokes back a sob as she watches Herzog’s reaction to the sounds on the tape, Herzog himself pinches the bridge of his nose, we can only assume to fight back tears of his own. When he says to her “do not listen to this tape, ever” she is crying and says “I won’t Werner, I won’t!”

We learn from the coroner what is on the tape. He apparently listened to it in its entirety, and was himself horrified by what he heard. Timothy moaning and groaning, and Amie screaming, and sounds of what he says are a frying pan being beaten upon the bear’s head. Soon he says you can hear Tim telling Amie to get away, run away and leave him, but then Amie’s screams change tone, and it is apparent that the bear has turned upon her. Once you put together the pieces of what he tells us of what he heard on the tape, and what he tells us of their injuries, it becomes evident that the bear likely had first grabbed Tim by the head, and that at that time the only sound he could make was moaning and groaning, this is when Amie is hitting the bear on the head with the frying pan. Then when Timothy screams and starts telling Amie to run, the bear has let go of his head, and has immobilized him by chomping on his leg and midsection, so that he can turn his attention to Amie. The thought, and the pictures this invokes into my imagination are enough, I cannot imagine having to listen to this tape, and am grateful that neither of them had left the lense cap off the camera, and that Herzog did not want to include this in his film. It is unclear how the attack got taped at all, whether Treadwell or Huguenard turned it on, or whether somehow during the struggle a button got pushed. I find it hard to believe that Treadwell could have turned it on himself, what with his head being stuck in a bear’s jaws and all. Or that Amie would have had the forethought to do it, I don’t think that would have been something she would think to do, though we really don’t know much about her, she doesn’t appear hardly in the video tapes, other than a couple of silent shots. Though it does seem like something Treadwell would think of, I’m not so sure he’d have had the opportunity to do it. I guess we’ll never know.

I’m not sure how many days it was after the attack that they were found dead, but it was a bush pilot who found them. He was I guess going back to pick them up, as it was time for them to go home. He noticed right away that something was wrong, he saw the bear, and after chasing it away by scaring it with the plane, he found bits and pieces of Tim and Amie scattered about. He called the rangers and they later found the bear, shot it, and gutted it and found the rest of the pieces. Allow me here to say “eeeeeewwwwwwwww!” I simply cannot imagine the horror…though my imagination does try…damned imagination!

While I admire the opportunity Timothy Treadwell grabbed to be able to spend time with the grizzlies, I honestly doubt that he did anything at all to protect them, other than to garner them some additional attention of ARAs. In my own opinion, he did the opposite of what he says he intended, I rather think he further endangered them, simply by allowing them to become acclimated to human “companionship” (there are several clips where Tim calls the bears his friends, or says that the bears have become his “good” friends). By allowing bears, or any wild animal for that matter, to become used to humans, we are endangering them, and ourselves. There’s one thing going camping or adventuring in the wilderness, to keep your distance and not interfere, and another, what Timothy was doing, getting waaaaaaay too close. Sure, he wasn’t quite as stupid perhaps as the stupid idiots I’ve seen along the highway in Algonquin park who stop and attempt to hand feed the bears peanut butter sandwiches! But still, I’d file his “expeditions” under stupid human tricks.

James and I argued afterward, did he “deserve” what he got, as some have said? No. Did he, as James says, “ask” for what he got? No, I don’t think so. He did however die how he figured he would. Despite his craziness, he was aware of the danger of living among the grizzlies, I’m just not so sure he took it quite as seriously as he should have. By describing them friends, he was deluding himself of the *real* danger. Afterall, who ever figures they’ll be murdered by a friend? (Herzog actually uses the word “murder” to describe the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard). I think that once he became aware of the fact that he was about to die, he would have preferred to die there than in Los Angeles. I think he considered the Alaskan wilderness more his home than LA. And generally speaking, people just prefer to die at home than somewhere strange and uncomfortable. I think perhaps he would have preferred to die by other means than to be devoured by a bear however!

I do hope that the release of this movie does not cause an influx of bear lovers to take up Treadwell’s torch in Alaska. I hope rather that people the see folly of his expeditions, and just stay away.

If you want to save the bears, save yourself, and just stay away.  ¶ 12:58 PM