Have No Fear, Mother Bear Is Here

Life can make you discover
that you have friends where you least suspected...
Case in point: Robert Biggs


Courtesy of KOVR Sacramento
Hmmm... The mere location of this incident
has me playing a certain song in me head here...!
Okay - never mind - let's just get on with the story here!

As Maria Medina reported *live* from Butte County, Sacramento on local station KOVR News, this past March 30th, one can have made friends in the unlikeliest places - without even have tried befriending them at all! And we may never know that we do possess those friends - unless something happens along the course of our lives, making them reveal themselves to us.

Robert Biggs has been hiking for a long, long time. Whenever he sees wildlife, he leaves it alone - and it had left him alone, too, in return. Until one day, one quite recent day indeed, when he basically found himself in the wrong spot, at the wrong time... The summary of the video linked above (just click on the picture above to view it; the video is, of course, subject to availability - as always!) aptly describes all that happened then:

Bear Saves Hiker From Cougar In Butte County
Fri, 30 Mar, 2012 - KOVR Sacramento
3:03 | 1,658,792 views (at blogging time)
A 69-year-old local man says he has been hiking for decades. But on one recent outing along the Feather River in Butte County, a mountain lion pounced on him and knocked him to the ground. He survived the incident, he says, all thanks to a very unlikely hero.

Yes - a BEAR saved him from that mountain lion. Not just any bear but one he'd seen countless times before, always getting out of its way to avoid bothering it - and its cubs. The bear is female and mother to a few cubs that were being targeted by the voracious, and extremely hungry, mountain lion. The big feline never found a chance to pounce upon the cubs, as the mother was too smart to allow that to happen, so it shifted its hunting focus towards the hiker that arrived onto the scene, suddenly as quite unexpectedly too. The bear and the hiker had some kind of a mutual respect thing going there and, as one became victimized, it was certain that the other would intervene...

When Bob Biggs' hammer did not get the job done, and the mountain lion stubbornly hung on to his back after he'd struck it twice in the head with said hammer, the bear intervened and the big cat had no other recourse than to recoil and flee. Surely it (or any other big cat, for that matter) has never met such formidable resistance from its intended prey!

Had it been the other way around, and the feline had found a way to get to one of the cubs, you can bet that Mr. Biggs would have not just observed either, safely standing idly by, as so many National Geographic dweebs do, anxious not to ''disturb the ecological balance of nature'' - ha! People - you won't let a coyote, a cougar, a hyena, any carnivorous animal feast on your offspring just because it is ''nature at work'' and the beasties have a right to feed themselves as well - HUH? Thus, I'm telling you now, you better not allow a cub of any kind, a bambi, any living thing under age just get eaten alive by any predator whatsoever. Especially not when you actually have seen those tiny, defenseless animals walk their first steps, seen them with their mother, seen them from day one and know them to be an endangered species, to boot.

Bob Biggs is fair, though - he even gave the predator a break and would have helped it, too, even though he nearly became its dinner.

Bob actually went back the next day, you see; he went back to look for the mountain lion that he feared was certainly hurt after successive bouts with his hammer and the mother bear! Luckily, there was no kitty-kat to be found anywhere - or he would have surely regretted having looked for it! For one simply cannot or simply should not be a good samaritan, sometimes - you know...!

Bob Biggs continues hiking and has no intention to stop doing so: after all, what happened is actually encouraging to him, is it not? Nature has embraced this human being who has dared to commune with it regularly for many years now. Even when some rogue element in it demonstrates some aggressiveness towards him (even though purely motivated by its own sustainance and non-malicious urges) -and, yes, many will contest the 'rogue' label here as it is only natural to feed and that animal is only following its natural instincts and all- still, no one wants to end up being dinner, not even a creature traditionally fitting the role of 'prey'... And what else could an unarmed hiker be fitting as, here? Even so, even then, the mild-mannered, average elderly gent can feel now that he has some back-up in the wild - in case anything does go terribly wrong!

Unlikely that Mother Bear there would go fetch some help, Lassie-style, in case he fell down a ravine - but, hey, you never know indeed...!

Bob is a survivor - life blesses some individuals like this, and Bob Biggs is definitely one of those. Word is that he also survived a plane crash (a 60-foot free fall) years ago! The man has got to have one heck of a Heavenly Attendant - one who won't hesitate to take on the guise of a burly bruin when it needs to do so, apparently...!

May we all be so lucky - in this life...!

That song it all made me think of?
I have to embed it here!
You didn't really think it was this one - did you now?  Just because we wrote ''May we all be so lucky -  in this life'' - now, really?  Really - come on!  Go hiking!
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