The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell, R.I.P.
Posted: February 25th, 2006, 2:26 am
A while back I read about this guy who was nuts about bears.
He lived with them. He hugged them. He loved them and believed they had lots in common with human beings.
I liked it, and thought it was cool, but didn't pay a lot of attention. Bears aren't my area of obsession, and besides, can't a bear rip your heart out and eat it as effortlessly as a dog can play dead or shake hands?
Yeah, it's great that someone is advocating bears, but despite my love of cats, I still exercise some decent caution around the big ones. I can risk getting my fingernail ripped off, but my FACE doesn't grow back, so when I played with those tiger cubs, we didn't get TOO rough. Yeah.
I'm probably fooling myself here, but OK.
Timothy Treadwell LIVED in between some serious bears. They were healthy and well fed, and they were open to some human interaction. Well. SOME of them were open. The others were jaded or just, simply, HUNGRY. UG.
In 2003, this nice, intelligent, uneducated, much-like-me guy with a Hollywood background, became a grizzly's midnight snack. Literally. So did his girlfriend.
The whole scientific community howled I TOLD YOU SO, in one voice. And then they shut the books forever on Timothy's stupid, bare, exposed, ass.
What this book does is tell you that Timothy Treadwell wasn't just a misguided fool. It tells you he wasn't alone in his ideas. It tells you that he KNEW bears. It tells you that OBJECTIVE science has the bottom line in mind and therefore it ISN'T objective science at all. It's a subsidized, paid-for advertisement of certain IDEAS that are bound to generate MONEY from some source or another. Tim Treadwell wanted money too.
Don't we ALL?
Well, Treadwell might be dead from bears. He might have been a serious FOOL in many ways, but he was DEAD ON in many other ways. Without a doctorate, without credentials of any kind, this guy got inside bear culture. His penalty for doing this was DEATH, but so what?
His work with bears survived. And he isn't the only bear enthusiast who's DIED in the process of study.
I don't feel like condemning this guy as a total idiot. The total idiot is the guy who thinks his dog is trying to take revenge on him by escaping the yard while he's gone. The total idiot is the person who thinks that animals read his mind. The total idiot is the one who assumes that animals can reason through four or five steps to a conclusion that even some humans would find daunting.
Tim Treadwell knew damn well that by living among bears the way he was, he was an apprentice swimmer without a life jacket.
He didn't CARE. He wanted information, and he got it. It led to a dead end, as far as bear/human relations are concerned, but it was a good try.
As a result of this book, I've learned to have less respect for SCIENCE, more respect for human beings, and even MORE respect for common sense.
I don't either condemn this Treadwell guy or lionize him. I've learned from him. I see myself in him, and that is scary. But it's also helped to warn me against mistakes.
I recommend this book to anyone who's interested in animals and wants to help them without ending up DEAD.
Tim never set any boundaries. You need to set them. We do it with kids, so doing it with animals makes good sense. If he'd set those boundaries, he'd be alive today. The scientific community would have been forced to recognize him, and he'd be a feature attraction on Animal Planet. Best of all, bears would have more protection.
I'm sorry that Tim thought bears could be trusted in the same way you'd trust your estate planner. He was messed up. He died from that assumption.
But that doesn't mean ALL his work was worthless and it certainly doesn't mean that bear rugs are worth more than live bears.
Read this book. Science is bullshit, but so are WE. The truth is, I think, somewhere in between.
He lived with them. He hugged them. He loved them and believed they had lots in common with human beings.
I liked it, and thought it was cool, but didn't pay a lot of attention. Bears aren't my area of obsession, and besides, can't a bear rip your heart out and eat it as effortlessly as a dog can play dead or shake hands?
Yeah, it's great that someone is advocating bears, but despite my love of cats, I still exercise some decent caution around the big ones. I can risk getting my fingernail ripped off, but my FACE doesn't grow back, so when I played with those tiger cubs, we didn't get TOO rough. Yeah.
I'm probably fooling myself here, but OK.
Timothy Treadwell LIVED in between some serious bears. They were healthy and well fed, and they were open to some human interaction. Well. SOME of them were open. The others were jaded or just, simply, HUNGRY. UG.
In 2003, this nice, intelligent, uneducated, much-like-me guy with a Hollywood background, became a grizzly's midnight snack. Literally. So did his girlfriend.
The whole scientific community howled I TOLD YOU SO, in one voice. And then they shut the books forever on Timothy's stupid, bare, exposed, ass.
What this book does is tell you that Timothy Treadwell wasn't just a misguided fool. It tells you he wasn't alone in his ideas. It tells you that he KNEW bears. It tells you that OBJECTIVE science has the bottom line in mind and therefore it ISN'T objective science at all. It's a subsidized, paid-for advertisement of certain IDEAS that are bound to generate MONEY from some source or another. Tim Treadwell wanted money too.
Don't we ALL?
Well, Treadwell might be dead from bears. He might have been a serious FOOL in many ways, but he was DEAD ON in many other ways. Without a doctorate, without credentials of any kind, this guy got inside bear culture. His penalty for doing this was DEATH, but so what?
His work with bears survived. And he isn't the only bear enthusiast who's DIED in the process of study.
I don't feel like condemning this guy as a total idiot. The total idiot is the guy who thinks his dog is trying to take revenge on him by escaping the yard while he's gone. The total idiot is the person who thinks that animals read his mind. The total idiot is the one who assumes that animals can reason through four or five steps to a conclusion that even some humans would find daunting.
Tim Treadwell knew damn well that by living among bears the way he was, he was an apprentice swimmer without a life jacket.
He didn't CARE. He wanted information, and he got it. It led to a dead end, as far as bear/human relations are concerned, but it was a good try.
As a result of this book, I've learned to have less respect for SCIENCE, more respect for human beings, and even MORE respect for common sense.
I don't either condemn this Treadwell guy or lionize him. I've learned from him. I see myself in him, and that is scary. But it's also helped to warn me against mistakes.
I recommend this book to anyone who's interested in animals and wants to help them without ending up DEAD.
Tim never set any boundaries. You need to set them. We do it with kids, so doing it with animals makes good sense. If he'd set those boundaries, he'd be alive today. The scientific community would have been forced to recognize him, and he'd be a feature attraction on Animal Planet. Best of all, bears would have more protection.
I'm sorry that Tim thought bears could be trusted in the same way you'd trust your estate planner. He was messed up. He died from that assumption.
But that doesn't mean ALL his work was worthless and it certainly doesn't mean that bear rugs are worth more than live bears.
Read this book. Science is bullshit, but so are WE. The truth is, I think, somewhere in between.