DOUG SHOOP: Bear Migration

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/03/14/photos-bear-researcher/

Minnesota black bears are on the move in northwest Minnesota. Bears are expanding their range out of forested areas, into farmland. Researchers are trying to learn more about how and why these bears are adapting to a new habitat where bears traditionally did not live.

DALE DRINNON: Tibetan Blue Bears

I have this page from a cryptozoology site in Italian but I don't have a good English translation for it. I'll send the link through anyway:

http://www.criptozoo.com/absolutenm/templates/viaggitemplate.asp?articleid=79&zoneid=10

And I have a Babel Fish translation for what I thought was the important part further down:

The Dre-Mo word in fact is used in Tibet in order to define the different variety of tawny[brown] bear, together to " Chemo" , " Chemong" , " Dredmo" and " Dremo". Considered the totally quadruped travelling point, lthe absence of visible heels in the feet, and the way with which the animal was procuring the food, is convinced that it was be a matter of a normal bear.

Interesting but to notice as the monk it insisted in the fact that the Dre-Mo is different from the " gorilla" , using in order to define quest' last the word " Me; , with which in Tibet, together to the names " Me; , " Megur" , " Miegye" , " Migeye" , " Mighu" , " Migio" , " Migu" , " Migyur" , " Mirgod" , " Mirka" , " Ui-go" , the yeti is designated meant like a various creature dall' bear and similar to the monkey, that it possesses long hair much on the head.

--This is all very good and pretty definite information: The Dremo is the "Big Hairy Monster" confused with the Yeti that turns out to be a large brown (Blue) bear. Its overall appearance and stance make that much pretty certain.

_________________________________________________


And the Brown bear has a peculiar non-human stance when standing up on its hind legs





That is depicted as what the DreMo is like:

Note the way the forelimbs are held, and the fact that the forepaws have CLAWS. The way the back legs are bent and the line of the back are also typical of a large brown bear. The humanlike face would be the most inaccurate part of the depiction, but seen front-on the face of a brown bear looks a good deal flatter than it really is.

Another striking feature is that this creature is differentiated from what the Tibetan monk wants translated as a "Gorilla", the "Standard" Yeti type. It would seem there is a bigger "Gorilla" and a smaller "Chimp" involved in reports of the type, but it does seem clear that although there is a clear case of complete confusion, there is also a basic distinction in the Native mind between apelike and bearlike creatures.


It would be easier to say "The bearlike creature reports are the bigger ones and the apelike creature reports are the smaller ones" but unfortunately that part is not so clear-cut either.


--Best Wishes, Dale D.

[Standing Bear photo is copyright by Jim Braswell, all others from the originating website but for the stamp, which is presumably issued under the authority of the government of Bhutan. Reprinted for educational purposes and no infringement on any of the copyrights is intended]

RICHARD FREEMAN: The Monsters of Prague #12

The Phantom Bear
In the olden days, before modern laws on hygeine, meat was sold from wooden huts. These were fly-infested, foul-smelling places over-run with dogs. Sometimes wild animals would approach the huts to steal meat. A large bear began to frequent the crude butcher's shops, cleaning up bits of old meat. It did not seem agressive and no-one really worried about it. As it turned out, the creature had not come out of the forests but was owned by a man who lived in Prague.

One day the 'tame' bear turned on a scribe and ate him. The authorities demanded that the bear be destroyed but its owner fled, taking the bear with him. He made money by displaying his man-eating bear in the towns of Cesky Krumlov, Strakonice and Klatovy. He was never caught.

Back in Prague a totally innocent bear was used to take the man-eater's place and was beheaded. Its ghost is said to haunt the areas were the butchers' huts once stood at Klarov. It will only pass over when it commits the crime it was executed for and eats a person.

NEIL ARNOLD: 1910 Kentish bear hunt & other escapees

The Times of December 27th 1910 interrupted their Christmas coverage with some alternative festive frolics:

‘Escape of a pet bear at Folkestone – a Himalayan bear which has been brought home from India by the King’s Royal Rifles made its escape from Shorncliffe camp on Sunday night or early yesterday morning and is still at large. The bear is the regimented pet and has been kept in a very strongly built cage in the part of the camp known as Tin Town, which is in the direction of Cheriton, near Hythe. A large number of the men of the King’s Royal Rifles yesterday scoured the county in search of the bear.’

There was also a bear hunt in Sussex reported march 28th 1928. Five years later there was a ‘Monkey chase at Brighton – (August 8th 1933) – A monkey which escaped two days ago in Brighton was chased along the parade by firemen, policemen and visitors before it was captured yesterday. The monkey had taken possession of a ladies cloakroom at the western end of the covered terrace on the Madeira Drive, and his tricks included the smashing of flower pots from a high shelf in the building. He was caught yesterday morning, but managed to escape again and was recaptured by a London visitor…’

In 1959 an escaped monkey was shot at Worthing in Sussex meanwhile on January 26th January 1981 The Times reported ‘Wolf shot after zoo escape – a wolf shot in a Kent village yesterday escaped from Howletts Zoo at Bekesbourne, near Canterbury where two keepers were killed by a tigress last year. The zoo is owned by Mr John Aspinall. As a search for the escaped wolf got under way a motorist told police he had knocked it down at Littlebourne. A member of staff at the zoo shot the injured animal.’

GLEN VAUDREY: An unlikely place to find a unicorn..

Glen is one of the newer additions to the bloggo family. He wrote to me out of the blue last year to ask whether we wanted a Western Isles volume in our Mystery Animals of Britain series. We agreed that we did indeed want one, and commissioned him. What we were not expecting was such a bloody good writer and all-round nice guy, who - by the way - is writing several other volumes for us, and he is even going to be speaking at the Weird Weekend. Wayhay!!

Now if you were to hear of a tale of a unicorn, where would you expect it to hail from? Perhaps some enchanted woodland glade or possibly some dark and forbidding Teutonic forest. But would you have considered Iceland to be the home of such a creature, maybe? After all some of the many Narwhal tusks that have taken up residence as unicorns horns around Europe have been found there. They might well have started in the cold waters around Iceland but what if I were to tell you that that country once supplied tales of unicorns on land?

The bjarndýrakóngur, or king of bears, is the Icelandic candidate for the unicorn title. While Iceland is not home to a permanent population of bears it is, however, the occasional host to a stray polar bear that has drifted ashore from some remote northern place. The winter of 1880-81 with its severe frost saw a record number of bears appear on shore; 63 beasts in total, which must have come as a bit of a shock for anyone who unexpectedly stumbled across one. While the 19th century might have seen them in record numbers the 20th century still managed to record a respectable 50 sightings.

Why all this talk of polar bears? Well, it seems that the bjarndýrakóngur was a rather special polar bear. It could hardly fail to be, which will be made clear in the following description. Appearing as the largest of all the polar bears - a result of the union of a female bear and either a walrus or a bull (not much difference in those two) - with red cheeks and a horn that extended from its forehead, it was hard to mistake for a normal polar bear. If that wasn’t a giveaway how about the fact its horn would be illuminated at night thus ensuring the bjarndýrakóngur always could see where it was going?

The last reported sighting that I have been able to find happened in the 18th century on the island of Grímsey. Just before a Whitsun church service a group of a dozen bears were seen to be approaching the island led by a bjarndýrakóngur with its glowing horn. Unused to such a sight, the congregation stood outside watching the bears walk past towards the south of the island. As the creatures drew level with the crowd the clergyman bowed to the bjarndýrakóngur and in turn had the bow return; clever things these unicorn bears.

The bears then headed off into the distance but before they disappeared from view, the last polar bear in the line ate a passing sheep. It appears that the bjarndýrakóngur did not approve of such uncivilised action and promptly, fatally ran the bear through with his glowing horn, so putting an end to such murderous action. After that the bears headed off into the sea and once again were hidden from view

BEAR ATTACK: STRANGE STORY ON NEIL'S BLOG

http://kentmonsters.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-papers-say.html


The Sheerness Times Guardian of Thursday 25th June 2009:

From Our Files

50 years ago...A Sheerness man attacked by a bear as he slept was refusing to talk to reporters. He was humiliated by the deep scratches to his head, hands and face, which were caused by a honey bear, the same size as a child's teddy bear....

THIS BEAR STORY IS GETTING MORE AND MORE PECULIAR

Yet another press release has come out from the Red Rose Chain Theatre Company which is staging an outdoor production of A Winter's Tale in the forest in August. It begins: "A 'bear' spotted roaming a Suffolk forest was actually an actor in costume promoting an outdoor production of Shakespeare."

This is actually the third different explanation for events in as many days. First we were told that the thespian bods had faked a video, then that they had made up the eyewitness sightings, and now that the sightings were provoked by a bloke in a costume.

This is rather odd. :

Actor and designer Jimmy Grimes said: "We didn't want to scare anyone. The idea is to get kids interested and excited about the play. We want to create a family-friendly, fairytale feel for the production.

Jimmy dude, you are certainly doing that, because now - in the best traditions of fortean investigation- nobody quite knows what was going wrong. According to all the stories:

The 'bear' was spotted by three people including Jenny Pearce who saw it as she finished a picnic with her three-year-old son. She said: "It was really big, moving through the trees. I picked up my son and went back to the car."

Now, no-one at the CFZ is disputing that the whole thing is an elaborate, and furthermore a well-staged hoax. But what exactly did happen. Did Jenny Pearce actually exist? Was she a figment of the imagination? Was she a friend or associate of the theatre company who just joined in for the lulz? Or did she see something?

If she did see something, did she see the shadowy figure of some bloke in a bear costume wandering about in the woods? If so, it must have been a good 'un! Even in these intellectually impoverished days when no-one seems to know ow't about the natural world, one would have thought that an eyewitness could have distinguished between a dude in a bear costume and a bipedal member of the family ursidae.

Or has the cutesy cartoon ethic which has so permeated society to the extent that intelligent, attractive, and otherwise seemingly together young people like the ones that I met at the Royal Academy back in January, call themselves members of a `furry fandom`, put on childish costumes, and have turned to recreating their childhood TV cartoon favourites to get their sexual jollies, permeated society to such an extent, that witnesses truly think that bears waalk bipedally all the time? If this is the case then Jenny probably ran back to her car in order to protect her picnic basket from Yogi and Boo Boo.

This is all very peculiar.

As I said above, nobody here is disputing the fact that the story is basically a hoax, but like all stories in the fortean ominiverse, it has developed a life of its own. Twice so far this year (the seal carcass in January, and the `Devil's Footprints` in March) the CFZ has become involved in a news story which balooned out of all control, and became far more important than it actually deserved. Darren naish also noted the same thing in connection with the absurd fuss made over a dead racoon last year, that was so banal that we ignored it to our detriment. Those who commented on it, had enormous amounts of media attention and tens of thousands of visitors to their websites.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this `Montauk Monster Syndrome` is an increasingly important phenomenon as far as cryptozoology is concerned, and in the current era of mass, and almost instantaeneous, communication it is only going to become more important.

So watch this space, and examine the aetiology of the next nonsensensical crypto-story as diligently as you can.

NICK REDFERN: The Bear Facts

Things are getting very weird regarding yesterday's post about a bear seen in Rendlesham Forest. First we had the sighting of Jenny Pearce, who said: "I saw it moving through the trees ahead. It was much bigger than a dog. I picked up my son and left for the car straight away."

Then today, news surfaced that the tale of the bear was actually part of a publicity campaign by a theater production company that was putting on a version of Shakespeare's A Winters Tale - which includes a famous stage-direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear."

All well and good, except for the fact that (a) Jenny Pearce continues to stand by her account of seeing a bear-like animal in the woods; and (b) this is not the first time a large animal with somewhat bear-like qualities has been reported within Rendlesham Forest.

Sam Holland, for example, had a close encounter with just such a beast in the same area in 1956. I interviewed Holland in 2001, and published his story in 2004. So, there's no way his case can be connected to the current publicity campaign of the theater production company.

And for those who are interested, here is the text of my original Word document on Sam Holland's story :

"Shortly after New Year’s Day in 1956, Holland was walking through the woods with his spaniel dog, Harry, when he was horrified to see a bizarre-looking creature come looming out of the trees some forty feet in front of him.

"It walked upon four huge, muscular legs – ‘like a lion’s’ – and its thick fur coat was both black and glossy. Incredibly, said Holland, the animal was easily ten feet in length; and so could not be considered anything even remotely resembling a domestic animal, or a known wild beast of the British Isles.

"Holland recalled thinking for a moment that perhaps the animal was an exotic big cat that had escaped from a zoo or private estate; that is until it turned in his direction and he was finally able to see its terrible face.

"Likening it to that of a sliver-back gorilla, Holland said that the monstrous creature possessed a huge neck, widely flaring nostrils, and immense, powerful-looking jaws. For a moment or two, the animal looked intently at Holland and his whimpering little dog; then, seemingly losing interest, continued on its way and into the depths of the surrounding undergrowth.

"Holland would later explain that the creature looked like a strange combination of ape, dog, lion and rhinoceros. Needless to say, the British Isles is not home to any such animal that even remotely resembles the beast that Sam Holland says he stumbled upon. Yet he is adamant that his description of the monstrous entity and his recollections of the day in question are utterly accurate.

"Today, Holland believes that whatever it was that he had the misfortune to run into half a century ago, it was unquestionably paranormal rather than physical in origin. But from where, precisely, he has no idea."

Franky, this whole affair puzzles me a great deal. I have no doubt at all that the theater company's publicity campaign is indeed an integral part of the story.

However, that the company should have chosen a location for their campaign that was already home to a large, mysterious 4-legged beast that was seen back in 1956, is decidedly synchronistic in the extreme.

And what about the fact that Jenny Pearce still stands by her report of seeing a large, lumbering beast in the woods?

Is it possible that, in a strangely Fortean fashion, the theater company decided to embark upon its campaign at precisely the same time that a large, bear-like entity (perhaps related to that seen by Sam Holland) manifested in the woods?

Whatever the ultimate truth, I strongly suspect we have not heard the end of this story!

MORE SHUG MONKEY MALARKEY

Today, as Kithra (God bless her) pointed out a Theatre Company came forward and claimed responsibility for the plethora of bear reports from Rendlesham Forest in order to publicise their new production of Shakspeare's "A Winter's Tale" cashing in on its most famous stage direction "EXIT pursued by a bear".

Well I have to admit that this is piece of work by the Bard of Avon with which I am totally unfamiliar (except for the line about bears and a rather unfunny quip about dildos) so I had to look it up.

The Wikipedia description of the play
doesn't really explain why the bear, (and the chick who looks like Little Red Riding Hood) feature so prominently on the poster, but hey - who cares? It's all good fun and in the name of art, so it does not really matter.

But it is springtime, and I have spent quite a lot of the last few days talking to the good doctor on the `phone so the idea of stunts versus art versus reality in some sort of surrealchemical mishmash are quite high in my mind. Although the first lot of bear sightings are - I am quite prepared to accept - bosh, albeit arty bosh carried out for the highest possible motives, and in a rather well executed hoax ** I would not be at all surprised to see this kickstarting a series of less easy to explain shug monkey reports in the region.

See what Redders has to say:
http://manbeastuk.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-on-rendlesham.html

** THE DAILY MAIL: "Actor and designer Jimmy Grimes said they had wanted to make one of the Bard's lesser-known plays more appealing to families and children. Mr Grimes created two youtube clips and email accounts from witnesses who claimed to have seen the bear.

He created the fake YouTube video by running through the woods with his mobile phone and added real life footage of a bear taken from the internet and altered with Photoshop."

We are living in a world where crappy cameraphone footage is so ubiquitous that a piece of footage like that constructed by Jimmy Grimes is entirely convincing. Well done mate