I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967

  For Scott Dawson

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  WHY I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT THE GRIZZLY ATTACKS OF 1967

  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT GRIZZLY BEARS

  FOR FURTHER LEARNING AND INSPIRATION

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CARD PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  Grrrrawrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

  The enormous grizzly roared with rage. Its dripping jaws were open wide. Its dagger-claws gleamed. And Melody Vega was running for her life. Mel had no doubt that this bear wanted to kill her.

  Just moments before, Mel had been sitting in the peaceful darkness, surrounded by the magical wilderness of Glacier National Park.

  Owls hooted. Night bugs shimmered.

  But then there were new sounds. Sounds that made Mel’s blood turn to ice.

  Massive paws crunching across the ground. Wet, wheezing breaths. Low, thundering growls.

  Mel looked into the distance.

  And there it was, the grizzly. Its silver-brown fur glittered in the moonlight.

  Mel’s body filled with panic. And before she could stop herself, she was running as fast as she could. Within seconds the bear was after her, its paws crashing against the ground.

  Mel’s heart pounded with terror as she sprinted toward a pine tree. It was small and thin. But it was her only hope for staying alive. She prayed that this grizzly didn’t climb trees.

  The bear was just one leap away when Mel launched herself into the tree. She gripped a low branch, kicked her legs up, and swung them around. But before she could start climbing, the bear was standing on its hind legs. It swiped at Mel with a giant paw, and the claws tore through the flesh of her leg. Somehow Mel ignored the searing pain, the dripping blood. She clutched the branches with her trembling hands, pulling herself up higher and higher, out of the bear’s stabbing reach.

  But the grizzly didn’t give up.

  It pounded the tree trunk, ripped away branches, and bellowed with fury.

  Graaaaaawrrrrr!

  The spindly tree shook, as though it was as terrified as Mel. And then, crack. The branch in Mel’s hands broke off. She tipped back. Time seemed to slow as she tumbled through the air, twisting and turning, and screaming for help.

  Down, down, down she fell. Mel braced herself for the crushing jaws and ripping claws.

  No grizzly had ever killed a human in Glacier National Park.

  Until tonight.

  “Mel! I have a question for you,” said Mel’s four-year-old brother, Kevin.

  “Go ahead,” Mel said.

  They were on the beach outside their grandfather’s log cabin. Kevin was perched on Mel’s lap, gobbling a roasted marshmallow. Their campfire crackled. The lake looked purple in the moonlight.

  “What’s the most dangerous, most scariest, most fiercest animal?” Kevin asked.

  “Here in Glacier?” Mel asked. She swallowed the last bit of her own roasted marshmallow.

  Kevin nodded.

  “A grizzly bear,” she said. “But only if you surprise it.”

  Everyone knew that.

  “What animal can beat a grizzly?” he asked.

  “Hmmm,” Mel said. She loved her little brother more than anything. But he could drive her crazy with his nonstop questions.

  “What about a mountain lion?” Kevin asked.

  “I doubt it,” Mel said. She stared into the campfire.

  “Wolf?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Coyote?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I know!” Kevin said excitedly. “A wolverine!”

  Those were ferocious animals that looked like little bears but were really a kind of weasel. Mel had no idea if wolverines picked fights with grizzlies.

  Luckily, their grandfather was just walking down from the cabin. His work boots crunched on the rocky sand.

  “Did somebody say wolverine?” he asked as he sat down next to them. “I once saw a wolverine steal a dead deer from three wolves. The wolverine was no bigger than a fox. But it had no fear. No fear at all.”

  Kevin jumped up off Mel’s lap. “Can a wolverine beat a grizzly?”

  “No,” Pops said, shaking his head. “Grizzlies are the strongest. But I’ll tell you this. Wolverines are fierce!”

  “Like me!” Kevin said with a little growl. He bared his teeth and turned his sticky hands into claws. Then he fell into Pops’s lap in a fit of giggles.

  The sound rose up into the starry sky. And at that moment, Mel could pretend that this was just another normal, happy vacation in Glacier.

  But of course there was nothing normal about this trip. And Mel was sure she’d never feel happy again. Dad was back home in Wisconsin. He couldn’t miss any more work this year.

  And Mom …

  Mom was gone. She’d died last December in a car crash.

  Mel felt a stabbing pain in her chest, like her heart was cracking apart all over again. She stood up, fighting tears.

  “Be right back,” she told Pops and Kevin as she headed to the cabin. She didn’t like anyone to see her cry.

  Mel hadn’t wanted to come to Glacier this year. But Pops said they had to keep up their tradition. They always came to Glacier for two weeks in the summer. Mom would want them to be here, Pops said.

  Dad agreed. “You love Glacier, Mel,” he reminded her. “I think it’s going to make you feel better.”

  By better, Dad meant Mel would want to do something other than sitting alone in her room. That she’d want to see her friends, play softball, go bowling … anything.

  But Mel didn’t want to feel better. She didn’t deserve to feel better. Since it was her fault that Mom was gone.

  Mel pulled open the door to the cabin as her mind flashed back to that snowy December night.

  Her friend Teresa had wanted her to sleep over. Mom said no because the roads were too icy for driving. Mel begged and pleaded. And finally, when the snow had stopped, Mom had agreed to take her.

  They pulled out of the driveway. The skies had cleared, and the snow seemed to glow. Mom had started to sing. “Row, row, row your boat …” And Mel started singing along. It was one of their funny traditions, from when Mel was a little girl. Whenever they were alone in the car, they’d sing together. The dumber the song, the better.

  They were still singing when Mom rounded a curve. The car hit a sheet of black ice. They spun around and around and around, then skidded off the road.

  The driver’s side of the car smashed right into a tree.

  It was all over in seconds.

  Mel sat down in a kitchen chair. Dad was wrong. Being in Glacier made her heart hurt even more. Because everything here reminded her of Mom. Every sparkle on Lake McDonald. Every breath of the sweet air. The song of every bird that sang from the pine trees.

  This had always been Mom’s favorite place — and Mel’s, too. This cabin had been in their family for more than sixty years. Pops and his dad built the cabin back before Glacier was a famous national park packed with people.

  Mel looked arou
nd. The cabin hadn’t changed much since then. It was still just four small rooms and a porch. It had no electricity, no running water. They slept on cots, read by lantern, and collected rainwater in a big barrel. The toilet was in back, in the outhouse.

  But as Mom used to say, who needed a fancy house when your backyard was one million acres of Rocky Mountain wilderness?

  Look in any direction in Glacier Park, and you’d see something that made your eyes pop open wider — a turquoise lake, a waterfall tumbling down a cliff, ice-covered mountains soaring into the sky.

  Mel wished she was back home in Wisconsin, where she could close the door, turn out the lights, and try to forget.

  “Mel!” Kevin bellowed. “Pops is going to tell another story! Come on!”

  Mel took a deep breath and headed back outside. She didn’t want to upset Kevin.

  “Okay,” Pops said. “I have a story about an animal way more frightening than a wolverine. To me, anyway. Because one of these nasty critters attacked me one night.”

  Kevin’s eyes grew wide. He had climbed back up on Mel’s lap.

  “Tell us, Pops!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Pops said, pretending to change his mind. “I don’t want to scare you.”

  “I am brave, Pops! I am very, very brave!” Kevin exclaimed.

  Mel cracked a smile and held Kevin a little tighter. What would she do without her loud, bossy pest of a brother?

  “All right,” Pops said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “This happened a very long time ago,” Pops began. “I was maybe ten years old.”

  Mel looked at her grandfather, whose face was lit up by the firelight. He had white hair, a matching mustache, and skin that was all crinkled, like an old map. It was hard to imagine that he’d once been a kid like her. But there was an old photo of him hanging on the wall in the cabin — little-boy Pops — with his buzz cut and freckles. He was proudly holding up a big trout he’d caught in the lake.

  “I was walking through the woods,” Pops went on. “Not too far from here, maybe a half mile up the lake. I was heading back to the cabin, whistling some silly tune, swinging my lantern. Not a care in the world … until I heard a noise just ahead, a noise I’d never heard before.”

  Pops leaned forward. “It sounded like this.”

  He clacked his teeth together. Click, clack, click, clack, click, clack.

  “Was it an alligator?” Kevin asked. He loved alligators. Most kids had teddy bears. Kevin slept with the stuffed alligator their aunt Cassie had given him.

  “Shhh,” Mel said gently.

  Pops dropped his voice to a whisper.

  “I should have stopped or at least slowed down, or found a different route. But I just kept walking along like a big dummy. And suddenly, wham! Something whacked my calf. I never felt such pain in my life — not before or since.

  “The animal ran off. I never got a good look at it. I hobbled over to a tree stump, shined my lantern onto my leg. I saw the strangest sight … dozens of long black needles sticking deep into the meat of my calf. And of course I realized what creature had attacked me.”

  “What was it?” Kevin cried.

  Pops raised his eyebrows at Mel. She’d heard this story a hundred times before.

  “It was a porcupine,” Mel said.

  “A porcupine?” Kevin repeated, frowning. He crossed his skinny arms over his T-shirt. “Pops! A porcupine is NOT a scary animal!”

  “Who says?” Pops boomed. “All creatures fear the porcupine.”

  Pops explained that porcupines had more than thirty thousand quills on their bodies. The spikes protected them from enemies — bigger animals that wanted to eat them. Each quill was like a small arrow. When a porcupine’s attacker tried to take a bite, it wound up stabbed in the snout. And when a porcupine got mad or felt threatened, watch out. With one whack of its tail, a porcupine could deliver dozens of quills deep into its enemy’s flesh.

  That’s what happened to Pops.

  “My mother had to use pliers to get the quills out,” Pops said, wincing. “Took her about three hours. I fainted once from the pain.”

  Kevin huffed. “I hate that porcupine, Pops!”

  “Oh no,” Pops said. “Don’t blame the porcupine. It was just protecting itself. It warned me. That click, clack, click, clack was it telling me, ‘I’m here! Please go away!’ But I was walking around like I owned the forest. I showed no respect.”

  Showing respect in the wild. That was a big thing for Pops — and Mom, too. She was always reminding Mel that Glacier really belonged to the animals. “We’re just guests here,” she liked to say.

  Both she and Pops worried that the park was getting too crowded. And some people didn’t understand how to act when they were hiking or camping. It used to drive Mom crazy when people littered on the trails. Mom’s temper could be fiery sometimes. Just like Mel’s.

  “Excuse me!” she’d yell, handing the person their empty soda bottle or Milky Way wrapper. “I think you dropped something.”

  “Tell another story, Pops,” Kevin pleaded. “Tell about a wolverine, or a wolf, or a tiger, or an alligator …”

  Pops chuckled. “Enough stories for tonight,” he said. He stood up slowly. His stiff knees cracked. “Remember, Aunt Cassie’s coming tomorrow. Right after breakfast.”

  “Yay!” Kevin said. Aunt Cassie was Mom’s best friend. She always joined them for a few days in Glacier. Last year, Mel would have been counting down the minutes until Aunt Cassie showed up in her little red Volkswagen. But the last thing Mel needed now was another reminder of Mom — another reason to cry.

  Kevin slid off Mel’s lap and scampered toward the cabin.

  “Race you, Pops!” he called.

  “Put out the fire, would you, Mel?” Pops asked. Then he turned and started limping after Kevin. “I’m coming for you! And I’m bringing my porcupine with me!”

  Kevin shrieked happily. They disappeared into the darkness. A minute later Mel heard the creak and slam of the porch door.

  Mel doused the fire with water from the lake and used a shovel to pile sand on the smoldering logs. Even a small ember could drift into the woods and start a fire. There were already more than ten wildfires burning in the northern parts of the park.

  So far, firefighters had kept them from spreading. But one windy night could change that. Especially in August, when the weather was hot and dry.

  Mel threw on extra sand, just to be sure.

  When the fire was good and out, Mel stood for a few minutes, leaning on the shovel. She stared up at the stars. She could see a million more here than back home in Milwaukee.

  And that’s when she noticed something strange … the total silence. The owls had stopped hooting. The night bugs weren’t buzzing. The whole forest seemed to be holding its breath.

  And then Mel heard a twig snap. Leaves rustling. Deep, wheezing breaths.

  The hairs on Mel’s arms stood straight up.

  She wasn’t alone. Something was here.

  Something big.

  Mel looked into the woods but couldn’t see a thing. It was too dark.

  She put down the shovel and pushed away her jitters. She had no reason to feel scared. There was no crime in Glacier. Pops didn’t even have a lock for the cabin door. Their worst fear was that a skunk would sneak into the house and stink everything up.

  Mel took a step toward the cabin.

  And then she heard it.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

  At first she thought it was thunder. But the sky was perfectly clear.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

  Mel stopped, her heart pounding. Should she run? Stay still? What was out there?

  She remembered Grandpa’s story about the porcupine. Was this animal trying to scare her away? She swallowed hard and slowly turned to look.

  She froze. The shape of an enormous animal hovered at the edge of the woods. A second later, it stepped out of the shadows, into a pool of moonlight.

&nbs
p; Mel gasped. The creature had shaggy fur and dark eyes. But it was the hump that rose up between its shoulders that told Mel what it was.

  A grizzly bear.

  Mel blinked. It seemed impossible, like it had leaped out of Kevin’s imagination.

  Except that Mel could see it. She could hear it. And now a voice in her mind was screaming in panic.

  Run! Run!

  But somehow Mel shut out the screeching voice in her brain. She didn’t run or shriek. Because if she did that, the grizzly would almost definitely come after her — and probably attack.

  Mom had told her that. Over and over. Grizzly attacks were very rare. No person had ever been killed by a grizzly in Glacier. In fact, most people who came here never saw one, even if they searched for weeks. Still, Mom always wanted Mel to be prepared … for anything.

  And so now Mel did exactly what Mom had told her to do. As the grizzly slowly rose up onto its hind legs, she didn’t look it in the eye. She didn’t want to make it feel threatened. With her eyes glued to the ground, she walked backward toward the cabin. Very slowly.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Mel saw the grizzly drop back down onto all fours. She felt its eyes drilling into her. Its growls and grunts rumbled her ears.

  Step by shaking step, Mel kept walking backward. The cabin was only a few yards away. But it seemed like hours before she got there.

  And then Mel couldn’t stop herself. She turned and practically flew up the rickety wooden stairs to the porch.

  She burst into the cabin and slammed the heavy wooden door shut behind her.

  “Mel?” Pops said. He and Kevin were right there on the couch. Pops was reading Kevin his bedtime story. “What happened?”

  Mel didn’t say anything. She was looking out the small square window in the door. It was very dark outside. But there was just enough moonlight to see that there was nothing on the porch. Mel’s knees went weak with relief. The bear hadn’t followed her.

  She spun around and locked eyes with Pops.

  “I s-saw … a grizzly,” she stammered.

  Pops put the book down. “Where?”

  “Right outside! It came out of the woods by the beach and … I thought maybe it followed me.”

  Mel saw the doubt on Pops’s face.