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Like chewing the gristle on a chicken bone.
That's how Brent Case describes the grizzly bear gnawing on the back of his head.
Mr. Case was trying to play dead, hoping the bear would eventually leave him alone.
“I don't know why I didn't scream because I was in so much pain,” he said. “I wanted to scream blue murder.”
Two weeks after being attacked by a grizzly bear, Mr. Case says he still can't believe he's alive.
Mr. Case, 53, was doing surveying work near Bella Coola when he felt he was being watched.
“The hair on the back of my neck started to go up.” He turned around to see a 400-kilogram grizzly bear headed straight for him.
Mr. Case did his best to play dead as the bear mauled him: It grabbed his left elbow, let go and then bit through his right arm, coming millimetres from slicing through a major artery (the animal had “bad teeth,” Mr. Case discovered afterward). Mr. Case dropped to the ground in the fetal position and the grizzly began gnawing on the back of his head.
“The pain was so excruciating. … I said to myself, ‘He's eating my brains.'”
It was all Mr. Case could do not to cry out, but he knew playing dead was his only chance. Next thing he knew, the bear was pushing him into the marshy ground, after which it covered him partly in mud and sticks – “seasoning,” he calls it – and left, presumably planning to return to snack on its prey.
Once the bear was safely upwind, Mr. Case fled to his car. Despite his swelling fingers, he fished the keys out of his pocket and drove the 25 kilometres into Bella Coola, blood dripping down his face as he tried to find a comfortable position so he wouldn't black out on the way.
“I knew if I didn't drive and I didn't have the fortitude to control things, I was going to die,” he said. “Adrenaline, when you're in this much pain and this much shock, I've never experienced that before.”
Mr. Case made it to town and felt every bump in the road in the ambulance to Bella Coola hospital, where he received treatment before being airlifted to Vancouver the next morning. He got plastic surgery and was treated for possible infections.
The grizzly has since been shot by a park warden. Mr. Case said bears that have a taste for people and aren't afraid of them often attack again.
Mr. Case is now recovering back home in Ocean Falls. He has deep, bloody scars on both arms, and the marks where the bear's teeth went in one side of his right arm and out the other are clearly visible. The back of his scalp is a network of stitching.
Mr. Case said he just feels lucky.
“Had I not played dead … I would be dead. I know that for a fact,” he said. “Everything takes a different perspective now—I shouldn't be here.”
