Gordon Grice's Blog, page 83

Yellowstone Fatality Under Investigation

Rangers probe whether bear killed Yellowstone hiker - WDAF:

"An autopsy would likely reveal whether the man was the victim of an animal attack, another kind of accident or died of natural causes. Rangers have not ruled out that the man's remains may have been scavenged by bears after he perished by some other means."

[Caution: Lots of pop-ups on the site linked here.]

Matador Gored Through the Throat

This is old news, but I only recently came across the photos. The matador survived reconstructive surgery and infection to return to the ring. For his above-average efforts, the bull was killed. 
Matador pierced in throat and tongue by bull 'recovering well' - Telegraph:

"The horn of the animal tore into the bullfighter's throat and emerged through his mouth in a dramatic goring that had the crowd screaming in horror.
The pink-stockinged, sequined matador was lifted into the air and then dropped to the sand. The bull backed away after it was distracted by fellow matadors who dashed to the rescue.

Mr Aparicio struggled to his feet, staggered a few yards spluttering blood, and was then carried from the ring."

When Moons Collide

Earth Had Two Moons That Crashed to Form One, Study Suggests - Yahoo! News:

"'It is entirely plausible for a Trojan moon to have formed in the giant impact, and for it to go unstable after 10 million to 100 million years and leave its imprint on the moon,' study coauthor Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. Imagine 'a ball of Gruyere colliding into a ball of cheddar.'

The remains of this Trojan moon would make up the highlands now seen on our moon's far side. At the same time, the impact would have squished an underground ocean of magma toward the near side, explaining why phosphorus, rare-earth metals and radioactive potassium, uranium and thorium are concentrated in the crust there."

Be that as it may, I offer these images of the face we've all seen. Photography by Dee Puett; music by Incorporal Air. 

Grackles

Photography by Dee Puett

Coyote Attack in Massachusetts

Coyote attacks two-year-old girl in Weymouth, MA:

"Ramponi says after the attack, she called 911, looked out her back window and the coyote was still in her backyard, listening to the girl scream, she thinks.

As of now, Weymouth Police say the coyote still has not been found."

Brown Bear Kills Two in Siberia

Deadly animal attacks - bear attack:

"A trip to the river for the father-daughter pair ended in tragedy, as both were mauled and devoured by a bear. This happened in eastern Siberia, near Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky. The bear killed Igor Tsyganenkov, by overpowering him, breaking his neck and smashing his skull in the process. It then caught up with Olga Moskalyova, 19, who ran for about 65 m before being attacked."

Grimly amusing translation issues abound in this report. The predator is a brown bear, the same species as the grizzlies more familiar to US readers. 

Shark Kills South African Surfer

'Sea was red in seconds' - Western Cape | IOL News | IOL.co.za:

""He was lying on the board paddling back to the surf after a ride when I heard him scream as the shark hit him the first time and pulled him off the board. Tim was trying to climb back on when the shark came around and hit him again. I only saw the fin. Tim disappeared under the water for a moment and, when he came up a few seconds later, the sea around him turned red," Clarke said.

Eighteen-year-old Plettenberg local Cameron Payne was with Van Heerden and four other surfers when the shark attacked.

"I was about 20 metres away from Tim. I was just lining up a wave when I heard one of the two Australian guys surfing with us shout 'shark!'.

"I looked across and saw the shark's tail thrashing as it churned up the water around him. There was a lot of blood," Payne said."

Death Stories: More Mummies of No Man's Land

In 1950, a certain traveler found himself near the extremity of Oklahoma. As he drove west, the rolling short-grass prairie gave way to a sea of sunflower, which in turn yielded to a terrain of buffalo grass dotted with scrub pine and red cedar.  From this landscape rose grotesquely beautiful rock formations.  Around dusk the road began to skirt the rocks in broad sweeping curves.  A gigantic human face loomed in the gathering dark.  It was only sandstone, but its appearance unnerved the traveler.  Further on, his headlights gave apparent motion to four pillars of eroded stone.  They seemed like huge women walking in a solemn procession.
Rounding a curve, the traveler suddenly found himself in a little town posted as Kenton.  It was an orphan town, remote from everything, literally within a stone's throw of New Mexico and Colorado.  When he stopped to ask about lodging, the traveler found he'd gained an hour.  The town claimed allegiance to a different time zone than the rest of the state.
The only hotel was a turn-of-the-century building that looked like something from a western movie.  A covered boardwalk ran in front of it, leading no further than the corners of the hotel itself.  Inside, things seemed more modern--sleek brass lamps, chairs covered in fake vinyl.  The burly desk clerk, a man named Tharp, was happy to chat with a road-weary traveler.  The main attraction of the area, Tharp said, was fossils.  He told about the time his own nephew, a fossil enthusiast, had been driving a road grader for the county.  The blade of his machine snagged on a bone six feet long, which turned out to be the femur of a brontosaurus.  That was the first of many dinosaur finds in Cimarron County.
But dinosaurs weren't even in the running when it came to interesting fossils, Tharp continued.  A few miles south of Kenton was an ancient lake bed.  The flint weapons unearthed near it showed human habitation stretching back ten thousand years.  A prehistoric people hunted there, taking the bison that inhabited the region at the time, broad-shouldered hulks much larger than their modern descendants.  On the shore of the ancient lake, the people butchered their kills.  The place was still littered with scrapers and broken arrowheads.
The traveler remarked on the eerie rock formations.  The clerk said the odd geography was riddled with caves.  On the walls and ceilings of the caves, and even on the bare faces of the rocks, were the graffiti of several ages.  Traders who passed through on the Santa Fe Trail in the late 1800s wrote some of them.  The rest were pictographs, painted in red or pecked into the stone.  They showed humans, snakes, birds, deer, and quadrupedal animals that might have been dogs, all in crude strokes.  Some of the drawings formed patterned circles of uncertain meaning--scientists claimed they were sun, moon, and stars.  The pictographs had been on the stone walls hundreds or even thousands of years.
"Since you're interested in this stuff, I'll put you in the fossil room," Tharp said, presenting the key.
Soon the traveler retired to "the fossil room."  It seemed an ordinary hotel room except for a few dozen arrowheads and scrapers arranged on the writing table and some fragments of basketry tacked to the walls.  After he had settled in, he noticed an odd ornament hanging on the door.  It appeared to be a chunk of stone about the size of a watermelon, and it had been carved into the shape of a human fetus.  The traveler deduced that this homunculus must be some graven idol made by ancient Indians.  He went to bed.
In the morning, as he shaved at the sink, the mirror happened to frame the image of the homunculus behind him.  Certain details he hadn't noticed before began to impress themselves on him.  For example, the thing's hair was not carved from stone.  It seemed to be real hair.
He examined the thing closely.  It felt like rough stone.  The dark-red hair was real, though it might have come from a horse's tail.  Then he looked into the face, and all doubt died.
The eyes squinted tightly.  The lips pulled back from the teeth in the snarl familiar to anyone who has ever stumbled on a dead and desiccated animal.  No one would, or could, carve such a face.
At the front desk he confronted Tharp with this information.  Tharp laughed.
"I guess I should have mentioned that to you," he said.  "Most people think that's kind of a neat deal, but some don't care for it."
"What is it?" the traveler said.
"It's a mummy of a little boy.  About 2000 years old, they say."  He told how the thing had been discovered in a nearby cave.  The traveler allowed that it was, in fact, pretty interesting. 
"Want to see his mother?" Tharp said.

*
In the attic, the traveler held a flashlight on Tharp's thick arms and hands, which were digging into a steamer trunk.  A heavy quilt lay in the trunk, and beneath it another and another.  The clerk lifted them out one at a time, sliding his arms beneath them gently as if they were sick children.  The quilts seemed to occupy the entire depth of the trunk, but when the last was lifted out, the traveler shifted his flashlight, and the beam picked out a mass of gray and sepia.  The traveler brought the light to the grimacing face, then down to the torso.  Unlike the first mummy, this one was imperfect.  Great gouges marred the rib cage and one thigh.
"The rats got to her," the clerk explained.  "Not here.  We run a clean establishment.  I mean sometime between when she died and when we found her."

Black Bear Attacks Near Aspen

Bear attacks sleeping climber near Maroon Bells in Aspen Colorado | Real Aspen | Roaring Fork Valley News, Guides, and Information:

"The bear lingered around the campsite after the attack, despite many efforts to scare it away," Borst said.

The two other climbers in the group controlled the bleeding with first aid supplies they had with them. They also activated an emergency transmission from a GPS transmitter before fleeing their campsite at Minnehaha Gulch.

The man was able to hike out under his own power, authorities said, and was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital where he is awaiting surgery.

It was the second such attack in fewer than 24 hours.

Elephant vs. Volkswagen

Natan Slifkin pointed me to this account of a small car and a large elephant. Apparently this has been circulating as an email forward with, as usual, some inaccuracies.

Car flipped by randy elephant bull: News24: South Africa: News:

"'I never thought I would be killed by an elephant," John Somers of Rustenburg said on Monday.

What is more, it was his 66th birthday - and he was in a Volkswagen Passat he had owned for only two weeks."