WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!

Dateline May 27, 2006

In one week in May 2006, 3 women in Florida died in alligator attacks. The state of Florida confirmed the fact that there were only 17 fatal attacks in Florida since 1948! No wonder Former Marine Candy Frey blasted one gator with four shots after it came into the lanai of her house and attacked her doggie! “I just freaked out and shot him-boom, boom, boom, boom,” said Frey. The gator-hunting season has now been extended by 11 weeks.
AnneMarie Campbell, 23, was attacked while snorkeling in a creek in The Ocala National Forest by a 11 feet four inch, 470 pound gator. The people she was with beat the alligator until it released her, but she died of drowning and blunt force injuries. To everyone’s great relief, wildlife officers later captured the beast, and the victim’s mother told the press, “Once they kill, they kill again, and I don’t want someone to go through what I went through.” But don’t blame the critters. Laura Brandt, a senior wildlife biologist with the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, said, “What does a person snorkeling look like? A torpedo with arms and legs.”
Earlier that week, a 28 year old Yovy Suarez Jimenez was attacked jogging on a bike path near a canal in Sunrise, Florida. The medical examiner said "The alligator attacked her and basically amputated her arms, bit her on the leg and back and pulled her into the water." (Jeez, this is starting to sound like Humanoids From The Deep!) Another woman’s body was found dismembered in a canal north of Tampa Bay.
It seems they are having a dry spell down there in Florida, which has the effect of shrinking the crowded gator watering holes and causing some critters to get kicked out and take refuge in backyard canals. It is now also gator mating season, making the males much more aggressive. Now consider the ongoing encroachment upon their traditional land, and you have a recipe for animals attacking humans. Experts recommend staying clear of hungry gators, and not giving them your food! They get used to people feeding them, and they may try to have you for lunch.
But according to statistics, the animal most likely to be responsible for your death is the innocent little deer, with approximately 130 fatal auto accidents attributed to them each year in the U.S. "It's not alligators you should be afraid of," said Frank Mazzotti, a Fort Lauderdale wildlife scientist with the University of Florida. "It's Bambi." Yeah, those furry fuckers seem cute and adorable at the side of the road, but they may decide to jump through your windshield at the last moment, when you don’t have time to swerve…
But that’s not the only reported interspecies attacks. Sharks seem to have been attacking Australian surfers more lately. In January 2006, At Amity Point, off North Stradbroke Island, in the first attack in the area since 1972, a poor woman scuba diving in wait deep water was attacked and had her arms bitten off down to the elbows, probably by a group of bull sharks, who are aggressive that time of year. And also in January 2006, in Perth, a Great White pointer shark chomped on the arm of a scuba diver without warning. The diver stabbed it in the nose with his scuba gun.
Moving onto land, there are plenty of mammals that have attacked humans in recent months.
An animal trainer in Minnesota was killed by one of the big cats she kept on a small complex of cages on her property. A friend found Cynthia Lee Gamble’s body on April 6, 2006. She was mauled to death by a Bengal Tiger, the first such death in the state, authorities said. The tigers were kept in separate cages within a larger fenced enclosure. One of the drop doors was apparently left open, leaving the tiger an opportunity it took full advantage of. Mike Janis, former director of the Duluth Zoo said, “A single person never, ever works alone with a big carnivore. All you have to do is slip, or not make sure a gate is closed, and something can happen.” The sheriff, Mark Mansavage, had the unpleasant and difficult task of trying to recover the body. Said he, “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever come across. I couldn’t tell you how many times (the tiger) kept running at the fences and just making that screeching roar. It’s something I’ll probably never, ever forget. I don’t know how these people get used to it and work with these animals.”
On April 4, 2006, an injured bobcat attacked a golfer on a fairway in the Tuscon, Arizona area. The golfer’s buddies immediately beat the animal to death with their golf clubs. I know what you’re thinking. Which club did they use, a wedge, maybe? Nine-iron? Putter?
On April 15, 2006, a cougar attacked a 7-year-old boy near a mountain trail in Colorado, a mere 50 yards from the parking lot. The unusual thing about this incident was that the boy was with a group of 7 adults, and was actually walking hand in hand with his father when the cougar attacked. The shocked hikers yelled, screamed and threw rocks and sticks at the cougar until it released the boy, who had a broken jaw and miscellaneous bites, but no mortal injuries.
Other animal victims have not been as lucky.
On April 23, 2006, 24 chimpanzees escaped from a wildlife sanctuary after a deadly attack on construction workers. Instigated by Bruno, the alpha male of the sanctuary, the angry chimps attacked a vehicle with 5 people, killing and mutilating the driver, and putting the others in the hospital, including one man whose hand would need to be amputated. Police came after the attack and fired shots, but claimed “We are combing the area and beyond to bring the chimpanzees back but would not harm them.”
Let’s move on to bears.
A black bear attacked an Ohio family at the Cherokee National Forest on April 13, 2006. The bear snatched up a 2-year-old boy in its mouth as the family tried to fend it off with sticks and stones. The mom distracted the bear and it mauled her. Their 6 year-old daughter ran away but was later found dead by a rescue squad about 100 yards down the trail, with a bear standing over her. They chased the bear off by firing at it. Rangers said the animal might have been suffering from a disease that affected its behavior. “It’s a pretty rare thing, black bears generally don’t attack people. I can’t think of any time other than - just really rare circumstances”, said Morty Williams, park ranger. The mother and two-year-old were seriously injured, but alive. The bear was soon trapped and euthanized. Black bears usually avoid humans. Forest Ranger Dan Hicks said he was perplexed by the attack "because it goes against what I've been telling the public for a long time."
On May 14, 2006, in Canada’s Bannf National Park, a black bear chased a bicyclist down a mountain trail and mauled him. Two people on the trail spotted his bike and broken helmet and heard him calling for help. The park warden then killed the animal.
And on May 22, 2006, a 500-pound bear escaped from an animal breeder and wandered into the next-door neighbor’s house and attacked a woman. The breeder was trying to clean the bear’s cage when it made a run for it, going into the neighbor’s garage and following a 15-year-old girl into the house, where it attacked the girl’s mother. The breeder lured the animal out of the house and shot it to death. The woman’s injuries were apparently not mortal.
On May 15, 2006, several sloth bears chased and ate a monkey in a Dutch Zoo, in front of horrified tourist families. In a statement, the park stated, “Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals.”
Which brings me to a point: don’t attribute human characteristics or motives to wild animals. They’re unpredictable. There is after all, a reason they’re called WILD animals. Just ask Roy Horn. Animals have attacked us humans since the dawn of time, there’s nothing new about that. What does seem to be new is the unusual aggressiveness of some of the attacks and the atypical behavior, like attacking people in a group, or attacking their owners. All activities that might not usually happen unless the animal felt threatened or that it had to protect its children.
With new diseases and mutated strains of old ones such as foot-and-mouth disease, avian flu, and mad cow disease, who knows how animal behavior will be influenced. And with global warming changing the worldwide water temperature, jet streams, tidal patterns and Lord knows what else, expect more confused animals to lash out in attacks on humans.
Of course, exploitation films have been predicting this for some time. 1932’s Murders In The Zoo, 1933’s Island of Lost Souls, the Tarzan movies, even the werewolf movies demonstrated a very primal fear of animal attack. Director Alfred Hitchcock really stepped up the stakes with his groundbreaking work in The Birds. (Try getting hundreds of birds to hit their mark!)
The 70s was a particularly popular time for films about nature gone wild. Shatner chewed up the scenery in Kingdom of the Spiders. Ben and Willard were about rats that attack humans, while ants attacked in Phase IV and Empire of the Ants, and snakes threatened in Stanley, Rattlers, and SSSSSSS. We had Gloria Swanson camp it up in The Killer Bees, John Saxon battle The Bees, while Irwin Allen made another of his star-studded disaster movies out of The Swarm. Slimy critters got their due in Frogs, Squirm and The Worm Eaters. In the water, we had Piranha, Orca, Jaws, and all the sequels and knock-offs, like Mako: The Jaws of Death. Trash film legend William Girdler gave us both Grizzly and The Day of the Animals, the latter of which has the whole animal kingdom going berserk.
The eighties brought us Klaus Kinski in Venom, Robert Forster in Alligator, the Italian Birds knock-off Beaks, and Wild Beasts, in which PCP in a zoo’s water supply makes all the animals go kill-crazy!
More recently the proud banner of animal attack film has been borne by Arachnophobia, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea, Bats, Rats, Eight Legged Freaks, Anaconda, and Slither.
And of course, everyone here at TFO Headquarters is excited about the upcoming film Snakes On A Plane. In honor of that, I leave you with one last story.
On April 2, 2006, a Florida man crashed his car after a pet snake he had wrapped around his neck began attacking him. Witnesses reported Courtland Page Johnson was driving erratically and crashed his PT Cruiser into several barricades. He got out of the car, and wrestled with the snake before driving off. When authorities came to his home, he admitted panicking after his snake bit him. He was charged with leaving the scene of a crash.

-Mr. Play by Play (aka Eric Bradner)