In his day “Grizzly Man” and “Bear Expert” Timothy Treadwell was the toast of glitterati on both coasts, a favored guest of Letterman and Rosie, a Discovery Channel regular, a friend and soulmate of Leo Di Caprio. “Common sense will tell you that this man knows infinitely more about Grizzly bears than anyone.” That’s Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown), who had been also active in Treadwell’s animal rightist group named Grizzly People.
“I want to live with them and go with them and not carry something that will hurt them. I mastered a way of interacting with them with body language that enables me to be in extremely close contact with them” sighed Treadwell to a mesmerized Letterman while a guest on his show. “Grizzly bears are really just big party animals. I discovered that singing soothes these bears.”
These bears are 1200-pound monstrosities. Their teeth and claws weren’t meant for hors d’oeuvres much less caressing. Love songs and valentine entreaties in the form of Mariah Carey and Barry White, or even Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson lyrics will might work for a while, however….
In November 2003, when a bush pilot dropped in to pick up Treadwell and his girlfriend from their remote campsite in brown bear country, he found a party animal indeed – a dinner party animal. A huge brown bear was sitting atop some mangled human bodies and still munching away. Apparently he’d put his predatory equipment to work big time, stalking, rushing in, then eating both Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, right down to their Birkenstock hiking boots and Ying-Yang pendants.
“Whoops! – Yikes!” The pilot skedaddled and called the park Rangers who got there posthaste and heavily armed. No sooner had they reached the gruesome mess when a huge bear charged from the brush. None of that rising up on the hind legs bit. None of that growling bit.
That’s for bluff. And like Hemingway tells us in Death in the Afternoon “an animal bluffs in order to avoid combat.” This brute meant business. He was mum, his beady eyes focused on another meal and his legs pumping furiously.
Amazingly, the bug-eyed Rangers refrained from crooning Lionel Ritchie’s and Diana Ross’ Endless Love. Call them pathetic yahoos, you Grizzly People, but no Karen Carpenter or even Celine Dion lyrics passed through their heads. Their magnums did the singing: BLAM!-BLAM! -BLAM! Twelve ear-splitting notes later the charging bear finally crumpled and skidded to a stop.
Still shaking and with parched mouths, the Rangers paced the distance to the bleeding behemoth and it came to 12 feet. “That was cutting it close,” one gasped. The bear’s autopsy showed most of Timothy Treadwell in his stomach.
Minutes later the Rangers noticed another bear stalking them through the brush. Call them hopeless yokels, you Grizzly People, but nary a line from either Roberta Flack, Carole King or even Enya came to mind. Both Minnie Riperton and Barry Manilow were ignored completely. If any lyrics entered their minds they were Gloria Gaynor’s, I Will Survive!
The magnums sang again. They rangers opened up with everything they had, knowing these bears respond to only one song: Born To Be Wild.
Turns out, Treadwell had a mike turned on during the attack. The Rangers found it and have provided excerpts. “They’re killing me out here!” he screams to his girlfriend. So Olivia Newton John’s I Honestly Love You must have fallen on deaf ears. Elton John had apparently proved ineffective. Both Can You Feel The Love Tonight and Your Song went unheeded.
Then came the Treadwell “whodunit?” Was it Cupcake or Freckles? Booble or Aunt Melissa? Perhaps adorable little Taffy? Treadwell named the bears, you see, much like Jane Goodall named her chimps. Perhaps Quincy was the culprit? “Quincy, do you remember when you stood over me?” That’s Treadwell interacting with a massive bear on one of his videos. “You were so hungry, and you should have eaten me, but you didn’t. Thanks for not eating me, Quincy – but if you had eaten me, good, ’cause you’re a nice bear!”
They say Treadwell was a recovering dope fiend and serious lush. “I will stop drinking for you and all bears. I will stop and devote my life to you,” he coos on one of his videos. “Bears are so much better than people. I’m their lifeguard. I’m there to keep the poachers and sport hunters away. In fact, I’m much more likely to be killed by an angry sport hunter than a bear.”
Malibu’s Grizzly People might gape at Treadwell’s fate. No bear hunter would. The ancients had better sense. “There can be no covenant between lions and men,” wrote Homer. Spanish philosopher and man of letters, Jose Ortega y Gasset, also shines a light: “The real care that man must exercise is in not pretending to make the beast equal to him,” he writes in his Meditations On Hunting. “This is a stupid utopia, a beatific farce. Hunting, on the other hand, contains a rite where homage is paid to what is transcendent in the Laws of nature.”
You’re tempted to laugh at this tragedy. It’s a powerful lure – almost a suction. The pair were Malibu California residents, caricatures of the species – New-Agists, animal-rightists, vegetarians… complete yo-yos. But it still strikes me as tragic.
Treadwell should have stayed on the booze. His friends should have done “an intervention” to get him back on booze. Mighta saved his life. Somehow I can’t imagine Ozzie Osbourne or Keith Richards– however “stimulated” at the time–engaging in anything half as stupid as Treadwell’s last hobby.