Alaska Man Monday: You Otter See This Kung Fu Bear Story

Fall is at our doorstep. Oh, I know, most of you in the Lower 48 are still dealing with hot days and sunny skies, but here in the Susitna Valley the week just past has been chilly and rainy. The birches and poplars are losing that early-summer bright green for the dusty, duller green of August, and the first traces of yellow are showing in the leaves.

More on that in a bit. Next… Well, here’s something you otter watch out for: Otters around Anchorage. Apparently, these aquatic meat Slinkies have discovered the appeal of the urban (or suburban) thug life.

Wildlife officials are warning people to avoid river otters after two recent attacks in Anchorage, including one in the Taku/Campbell area this week.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game urged people to watch out for aggressive animals in an alert Wednesday, a day after a man was injured when an otter approached him and a group of children along Campbell Creek near Taku Park.
Late last month, a child on a paddleboard was bitten during an encounter with a group of four river otters on Sand Lake, according to the statement. Fish and Game officials said otters also acted aggressively with a dog, which wasn’t injured, in the same area.

This seems rather surprising, as otters are usually pretty inoffensive and even playful critters, although they tend to give humans a wide berth. When I was a kid in Allamakee County, Iowa, we’d see them now and again along Bear Creek, which flowed through my folks’ property. I can remember one late winter when they made a slide on a steep bank of the creek, and three of them, if memory serves, would slide down, run back up the bank, and slide down again. It was a lot of fun to watch them.

These Anchorage otters are apparently less playful.

River otters are found throughout Anchorage’s lakes and streams, often in groups, and can be territorial, biologists say. They can travel both overland and by using Anchorage’s connected bodies of water.
Fish and Game officials said in Wednesday’s statement that they had few details about the otters involved in the encounter this week, as well as their group composition.

Alaska Man score: 5 aquatic meat Slinkies. They’re just doing what they do.

Now then, here’s another interesting Alaska critter story, this one out of Kodiak Island. This gutsy woman repelled a charging brown bear, not with pepper spray, not with a firearm, but with jiu-jitsu.

Yes, really.

While walking her dog Vesper on a routine weekly route near Bells Flats — a small community about 10 miles from the town of Kodiak — on Aug. 18, (Katelynn) Lane suddenly found herself in a life-or-death confrontation next to a salmon stream.
Armed with no deterrents, she attempted standard bear safety protocols by making noise and standing her ground.
But when the sow kept barreling toward her, Lane made the decision to scramble up a vertical hill. It was during this climb that her dog Vesper intervened, momentarily distracting the brown bear long enough for Lane to reposition herself.

I know I said kung fu in the headline. Kung fu is funnier. Anyway, the martial arts tactic worked:

“You use one leg to kind of block and you kick with the other leg. I don’t know if that was what made that happen or if that was entirely instinctual, but if a person wanted to attribute it to some sort of training, then I suppose that would be it.”
As the bear returned to the hill, it grabbed Lane’s right leg. Lying on her back with her feet pointed downslope, Lane used the leverage to deliver a defensive kick directly to the bear’s face, halting the encounter.

Of course, Ms. Lane was fortunate indeed. She probably startled the bear, who was more concerned about getting her cubs away than pressing home an attack. But that kick to the snoot may have been persuasive. Bears have very sensitive noses, and not just where their sense of smell is concerned. If you have to fight a bear, direct your blows on its nose, especially since the rest of a huge Kodiak brown bear is pretty much bulletproof.

Alaska Man score: 5 bears with sore noses.

In closing, let’s talk about firewood, especially the virtues and shortcomings of various kinds of stove wood.

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