Nature is filled with beautiful things—mountains and rivers, majestic animals, cool trees—that rejuvenate and inspire us after we’ve been cooped up in the restrictive indoors. It’s also jam-packed with creatures that will absolutely fuck you up, like angry bears who were just interrupted while doing it.
Earlier this week, Dan Richman learned about the latter as he was hiking in the Sierra Madre foothills of California. “All of a sudden, I saw this bear standing on its hind legs and I’d never seen a bear in person before. I was pretty freaked out,” Richman told KTLA.
He backed away from the bear, only to run into another bear. He screamed in an attempt to scare it off. When that didn’t work, he tried to run away.
“I was running right past it, and it just came down and got me. It first bit my right wrist and then it somehow came around and got my leg,” he told KABC. “Next thing I knew I was on the ground on my hands and knees and it was almost like a wrestling position.”
The bear clawed his arm and leg, and put its mouth around his neck. “I just stayed really, really still,” he said. “I just didn’t move. On my hands, on my knees. The bear was on top of me. He eased up and I got up and walked away. Once I thought it was clear, I just ran down the mountain.”
His injuries, which included cuts to his head, legs, feet, and torso, were severe–local police called it a “pretty good bear attack–and Richman said he was lucky to survive.
But why were the bears so mad? A park spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that “may have been a mating pair that was interrupted” and that Richman “probably just surprised the bears and they reacted the way an animal with teeth and claws does [when interrupted while boning].”
Messy breakups, deranged antics, pets gone wild. The Internet car-crash you can’t turn away from. For more Hot Messes, check out: Woman Claims Wendy’s Served Her 4-Year-Old Daughter Fries Covered With Weed and “Suck It, Trebek”: How Alex Trebek Fired Up All Of Nerdom With This One Word.
