From the Daily Mail: "Woman, 71, mysteriously found dead at home was mauled to death in first ever fatal black bear attack in California." From the article:
A 71-year-old California woman who was mysteriously found dead at home was mauled to death by a black bear - in the first ever fatal attack of its kind.
Patrice Miller was found dead last November in her home in Downieville, a tiny town in the Sierra Nevada, two hours northeast of the state capital, Sacramento.
Sierra County sheriff’s deputies were checking on the welfare of a resident who hadn’t been seen for a few days when they found a broken door and bear scat on the porch.
The reference to bear scat reminds me of the poem, "Reincarnation" by Wallace McRae:
What is reincarnation? A cowboy asked his friend.
It starts, his old pal told him, when your life comes to an end.
They wash your neck and comb your hair and clean your fingernails,
And put you in a padded box away from life’s travails.
The box and you goes in a hole that’s been dug in the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when you’re planted neath that mound.
Them clods melt down, just like the box, and you who is inside.
And that’s when you begin your transformation ride.
And in a while the grass will grow upon your rendered mound,
Until some day, upon that spot, a lonely flower is found.
And then a horse may wander by and graze upon that flower
That once was you, and now has become your vegetated bower.
Now, the flower that the horse done eat, along with his other feed,
Makes bone and fat and muscle essential to the steed.
But there’s a part that he can’t use and so it passes through.
And there it lies upon the ground, this thing that once was you.
And if perchance, I should pass by and see this on the ground,
I’ll stop awhile and ponder at this object that I’ve found.
I’ll think about Reincarnation and life and death and such,
And come away concludin’, why, you ain’t changed all that much.
They used to get pretty spicey around where I grew up. Trapped them with honey-covered bacon.
ReplyDeleteWhile most of us focus on attacks by brown bears/grizzlies, more people are attacked by black bears every year than by brown bears.
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