Bear Hug
Don't
get too close to a brown bear!
The Alaskan
brown bear is the biggest land-based meat-eating animal in
the world. It weighs up to 770 kilos.
You don’t want to annoy a brown bear because they are
famous for their bad tempers. They can
also run very fast. A running bear can reach 30 mph.
That’s quicker than a horse. It’s certainly
quicker than you.
Bears
don’t like loud noises. Luckily, Marin Cogey
remembered this at a vital moment. A
bear was trying to crush the 55 year-old Bulgarian in his
arms at the time.
Escape?
Mr. Cogey was
hunting in woods near his home in Milkovica in Bulgaria
when the bear attacked him from behind.
A real ‘bear hug’ is no
fun. Mr. Cogey had a rifle but couldn’t free his
arms to use it. After a struggle he managed to hit the
animal with the butt of his gun.
The bear let go. Somehow Mr. Cogey managed to fire his
rifle into the air. That made a very loud noise! The bear
ran off.
A happy end to the story? Not quite. There’s an
expression in English; ‘you are not safe until you
are out of the wood’. Mr. Cogey was still in the
wood. And bears can still run at 30 MPH.
Mr. Cogey wanted to get away – fast. He was in such a
hurry that he forgot to put the safety catch on his rifle.
As he climbed to his feet, he slipped and lost his balance.
The gun went off again. This time it was pointing directly
at Mr. Cogey’s head.
Lucky Escape
Some hours later
another hunter was walking through the wood. He came across
a body lying face down in the leaves. A rifle lay beside
it.
When he touched the man’s head, he felt blood.
‘Oh no!’ he cried, fearing the worst.
At that moment the body came to life. Mr Cogey wiped the
blood from his eyes. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
What had happened was this. The bullet had grazed Mr.
Cogey’s head but missed the important bits. Mr. Cogey
had lost consciousness.
‘It was a very lucky escape,’ Mr. Cogey later
said in hospital. He was there with relatively minor
injuries: a punctured lung and broken ribs. ‘The
bullet missed by a few millimeters. ‘
So a man fights off a huge bear and escapes. Then he falls
over - and nearly kills himself! There’s a lesson
there somewhere.
