1. Quicksand:
The force needed to pull out a person immersed in quicksand is about the same needed to lift a car.... The trick for escaping is to slowly wiggle the feet and legs, allowing water to flow in. People float in quicksand so it is also impossible to sink all the way in, but quicksand usually forms at river estuaries, so a captive could drown at high tide.Quicksand, like lava, is a big kid fear, for some reason.
2. Bears:
Attacks can generally be divided into two groups: predatory and defensive. Each calls for a different strategy.Oh, so you have to understand the bear's feelings?
Black and grizzly bears are capable of both types of attack. Those involving grizzlies tend to be defensive, when the animal feels threatened, according to Stephen Herrero, a bear expert at the University of Calgary and the author of "Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance." Playing dead then lets the bear know you're not a threat and can cause it to back off.
Black bears usually flee from humans, but when they do attack the motive tends to be predatory, and playing dead doesn't work. Neither does running away, since bears are much faster than humans.
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9 comments:
I wonder how bears feel about quicksand. Maybe you could survive by playing stuck.
Of course you'd know how not dangerous quicksand really was had you been a fan of Myth Busters on the Discovery Channel. It's a great show... highly recommended.
-you better kill that squirrel before tangling with any bears
The fear of quicksand, at least in my generation, comes primarily from the original Mario games, where quicksand seemed to be the dominant variety of terrain in every desert area. Why, if I find myself in the desert, I myself might just be pulled under to the great unknown!
Besides from bottomless pits in the ground, quicksand was the only thing that could kill you when you had an invincability star as well. Maybe when you're young, that's kind of like a metaphor for our mortality- even with youth and what seems like immoratality, there are certain things that can kill us. Like quicksand. And endless pits.
The bear advice appears to be exactly opposite what I had been taught - that Grizzlys charge for no good reason, but that Blacks charge to protect their young.
The thing is, it is the Grizzly that is at the top of the food chain (or was, until very, very, recently, when we were able to supplant him through the use of high powered rifles). When they share range, it is the Grizzly that eats the Black bear, and not the other way around.
There seem to be a lot of Black bears in the foothills west of Denver, and they almost never attack humans - except when cubs are involved. When my daugher was three, she took a bear cast to school for show-and-tell. We had one walk on the road by the house most mornings, and getting a paw cast was easy. We never saw it, just its tracks every day when we went down for the paper. I often carried a gun when out with my infant daughter - not for the black bear, but for the local mountain lion. (and that is one animal you really dont't want to run from - running animals are prey, and while we were up there, the only lion caused death was of a jogger whose running trigger the fatal attack).
The facts as presented by Ms. Ann regarding the squirrel in her house do suggest the predatory nature of a fox squirrel at play. Note the absence of scurrying sounds and gnawing sounds at night. Only a lurking red squirrel would mask his presence like that. Note the absence of food particles, save but the one nut shell. I didn't want to mention it but surely to God she has hired a couple of pros by now to get the invader. A red squirrel if cornered damn sure won't run around in a hysterical manner - they will come straight at the threat.
Quicksand and Bears? Pshaw. What you really have to look out for are Lightning Sand and R.O.U.S.es...
THIS IS ALSO MEANT TO BE A BALDFACED PLUG FOR MY BLOG!!!
I blogged about wild blueberries and bears in the Smoky Mountains National Park. You should see how big their crap gets!
Maybe it was a black bear that left that acorn shell in your house. Therefore, that acorn saved your life!
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