An Invented Life
Timothy Treadwell was the sort of guy most Alaskans loved to hate. For starters, Treadwell was an outsider, a Californian from the weird-wacky end of the scale, a guy sporting a shock of blond hair and a backward baseball cap, with the outdoors skills you'd expect of a former Malibu cocktail waiter. Then there was the way Treadwell acted around bears. Lots of Alaskans would like to get a bear in their rifle sights； Treadwell sang and read to the grizzlies on the rugged Katmai Coast, and gave them names like Thumper, Mr. Chocolate and Squiggle. He would walk up to a half-ton wild animal with four-inch claws and two-inch fangs, and say, “Czar, I'm so worried！ I can't find little Booble.” In Alaska, that kind of behavior makes a man stand out —— and not in a good way.
Treadwell had been a fixture along the Katmai Coast for 13 years, camping out each spring and summer, alone, in the heart of bear country, deliberately seeking out the animals. He told the story of how this came about in his book, Among Grizzlies. By Treadwell's account, he was born into a middle-class family on Long Island, New York. He wasn't really a bad kid, but a handful. All along, he sensed a kinship with animals； he “donned imaginary wings, claws, and fangs.” As an adolescent he did more than his share of drinking, wrecked the family car and managed to get arrested. After high school he left home for California, where he became “an overactive street punk without any skills, prospects or hopes.” He slid into hard-core drug use and was plucked back from the edge by a Vietnam vet with a heart of gold, who slapped him into shape and pointed him toward Alaska and bears. There he discovered his true purpose in life： watching over those noble and imperiled creatures.
The way he told it, he had stumbled onto a peaceable kingdom where the bears seemed neither ferocious nor afraid of man —— a childhood dream made real. Photos and videos document the breathtaking proximity to the animals that he was able to achieve. Not only did they not attack, but they seemed to give a collective ursine shrug and accept him as a somewhat odd-smelling and harmless hanger-on.
Crawling on all fours, singing and talking in that sort of odd, high voice normally reserved for babies and small dogs —— “Hey, little bear, love you, aren't you beautiful, that's right, love you” —— Treadwell sidled up to wild bears, his camera and video recorder whirring, and he filled notebooks with observations, scrawled in wavering schoolboy print. Some of the animals, he maintained, seemed to actually enjoy his company. A wounded bear he named Mickey slept near his tent for weeks and recovered； mother bears would leave their cubs nearby when they went off to forage, as if asking him to babysit. By his own admission, he even went so far as to plant a kiss on one bear's nose after it licked his fingers. Treadwell had found love, so powerful it bordered on obsession.
He called the objects of his affection grizzlies, but they were and are considered by Alaska biologists to be brown bears, the coastal version of the species Ursus arctos. The inland variation is commonly known in North America as grizzly （Ursus arctos horribilis）。 The distinction between grizzlies and brown bears is, most Alaskans would argue, the difference between pit bulls and Labrador retrievers. But Treadwell chose to call his bears grizzlies for reasons any publicist could explain, and justified it in print by rightly claiming they were the same species.
In the history of the Katmai National Park and Monument, stretching back over 85 years, not one person had been seriously mauled, let alone killed, by a bear. Still, these huge animals are far from harmless. At least twice, Treadwell was reduced to a quaking ball of nerves. In one case, witnessed from a distance by a bear-viewing guide in the mid-'90s, an older male bear who was courting a female lost his temper at Treadwell and stopped just short of knocking his head off. Another time, threatened by a bear trashing his tent, Treadwell made a radio call in a total panic to a local air service, asking for an immediate fly-out from the area.
Treadwell never carried a gun, and maintained that even if firearms had been legal in the park, he still wouldn't have carried one. Early on he swore off nonlethal means of protection, like the newly developed （and highly effective） portable electric fences, and even pepper spray. The spray he did use once, when he felt he had no other choice, hosing a bear he'd named Cupcake； he was so distressed by the bear's apparent agony that he vowed he'd never use repellent again. Fear, he decided, wasn't the message he wanted to send. Good intentions were the only shield he needed.
From “THE GRIZZLY MAZE,” Copyright ？ 2005 By Nick Jans, Published in paperback by Plume, a member of Penguin Group （USA） INC., 375 Hudson, New York, NY 10014
Timothy Treadwell was the sort of guy most Alaskans loved to hate. For starters, Treadwell was an outsider, a Californian from the weird-wacky end of the scale, a guy sporting a shock of blond hair and a backward baseball cap, with the outdoors skills you'd expect of a former Malibu cocktail waiter. Then there was the way Treadwell acted around bears. Lots of Alaskans would like to get a bear in their rifle sights； Treadwell sang and read to the grizzlies on the rugged Katmai Coast, and gave them names like Thumper, Mr. Chocolate and Squiggle. He would walk up to a half-ton wild animal with four-inch claws and two-inch fangs, and say, “Czar, I'm so worried！ I can't find little Booble.” In Alaska, that kind of behavior makes a man stand out —— and not in a good way.
Treadwell had been a fixture along the Katmai Coast for 13 years, camping out each spring and summer, alone, in the heart of bear country, deliberately seeking out the animals. He told the story of how this came about in his book, Among Grizzlies. By Treadwell's account, he was born into a middle-class family on Long Island, New York. He wasn't really a bad kid, but a handful. All along, he sensed a kinship with animals； he “donned imaginary wings, claws, and fangs.” As an adolescent he did more than his share of drinking, wrecked the family car and managed to get arrested. After high school he left home for California, where he became “an overactive street punk without any skills, prospects or hopes.” He slid into hard-core drug use and was plucked back from the edge by a Vietnam vet with a heart of gold, who slapped him into shape and pointed him toward Alaska and bears. There he discovered his true purpose in life： watching over those noble and imperiled creatures.
The way he told it, he had stumbled onto a peaceable kingdom where the bears seemed neither ferocious nor afraid of man —— a childhood dream made real. Photos and videos document the breathtaking proximity to the animals that he was able to achieve. Not only did they not attack, but they seemed to give a collective ursine shrug and accept him as a somewhat odd-smelling and harmless hanger-on.
Crawling on all fours, singing and talking in that sort of odd, high voice normally reserved for babies and small dogs —— “Hey, little bear, love you, aren't you beautiful, that's right, love you” —— Treadwell sidled up to wild bears, his camera and video recorder whirring, and he filled notebooks with observations, scrawled in wavering schoolboy print. Some of the animals, he maintained, seemed to actually enjoy his company. A wounded bear he named Mickey slept near his tent for weeks and recovered； mother bears would leave their cubs nearby when they went off to forage, as if asking him to babysit. By his own admission, he even went so far as to plant a kiss on one bear's nose after it licked his fingers. Treadwell had found love, so powerful it bordered on obsession.
He called the objects of his affection grizzlies, but they were and are considered by Alaska biologists to be brown bears, the coastal version of the species Ursus arctos. The inland variation is commonly known in North America as grizzly （Ursus arctos horribilis）。 The distinction between grizzlies and brown bears is, most Alaskans would argue, the difference between pit bulls and Labrador retrievers. But Treadwell chose to call his bears grizzlies for reasons any publicist could explain, and justified it in print by rightly claiming they were the same species.
In the history of the Katmai National Park and Monument, stretching back over 85 years, not one person had been seriously mauled, let alone killed, by a bear. Still, these huge animals are far from harmless. At least twice, Treadwell was reduced to a quaking ball of nerves. In one case, witnessed from a distance by a bear-viewing guide in the mid-'90s, an older male bear who was courting a female lost his temper at Treadwell and stopped just short of knocking his head off. Another time, threatened by a bear trashing his tent, Treadwell made a radio call in a total panic to a local air service, asking for an immediate fly-out from the area.
Treadwell never carried a gun, and maintained that even if firearms had been legal in the park, he still wouldn't have carried one. Early on he swore off nonlethal means of protection, like the newly developed （and highly effective） portable electric fences, and even pepper spray. The spray he did use once, when he felt he had no other choice, hosing a bear he'd named Cupcake； he was so distressed by the bear's apparent agony that he vowed he'd never use repellent again. Fear, he decided, wasn't the message he wanted to send. Good intentions were the only shield he needed.
From “THE GRIZZLY MAZE,” Copyright ？ 2005 By Nick Jans, Published in paperback by Plume, a member of Penguin Group （USA） INC., 375 Hudson, New York, NY 10014