12/22/2009 9:34:00 PM 2009 IN REVIEW: #10 (tie) - Rabid wild animals attack at least eight people in Yavapai County #10 (tie) STORY OF THE YEAR
Courtesy photo James Gruver holds the rabid bobcat he strangled to death when it attacked him at his remote home north of Castle Hot Springs Dec. 14.
Matt Hinshaw/ The Daily Courier State wildlife officials chased this full-grown male black bear throughout the Yavapai Hills subdivision June 23 with the intention of killing it, but they couldn't safely get a clear shot in the populated area.
A rural Yavapai County man strangled a rabid bobcat to death this past week, topping off a bizarre series of local human encounters with rabid wildlife in 2009.
It's no surprise that Arizona wildlife officials counted a record number of wildlife rabies cases this year at 250, shattering the previous record of 176 set in 2008. That number included 44 cases of human exposure and 157 cases of pet exposure to rabies.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department reported 15 cases of known rabies in wild animals in Yavapai County, with eight in foxes and three in bobcats.
Wildlife officials haven't found any explanations for the huge increase, except that rabies generally runs in cycles and more people are living in Arizona than ever before.
The most bizarre encounters have been in Yavapai County.
At least seven Yavapai County residents suffered attacks by rabid bobcats and foxes this year near Prescott, in Cottonwood and now in the Castle Hot Springs area.
James Gruver was taking his sand buggy off his trailer at his remote home about four miles north of Castle Hot Springs in southern Yavapai County Monday afternoon when he heard growling under the trailer.
Thinking it might be one of his cats, he leaned under the trailer and quickly found out it was a different kind of cat - a wild, rabid bobcat.
"It was just giving me a stare that just gives you a chill," Gruver said.
Before he had time to react - his gun was only six feet away - the bobcat lunged at him and knocked him onto his back on the ground as he tried to shove it away.
With the insane bobcat's jagged teeth only about 18 inches from his face, Gruver instinctively grabbed it around the neck to keep it from biting right into his neck. He knew only a rabid animal would attack him like that.
"There for a few minutes, it was just ripping me apart," he said. "Claws were flying everywhere."
As he tried to strangle it, he got up onto his knees and then put a knee down on its ribcage to hasten its demise. Within a minute, it stopped struggling.
State wildlife officials praised Gruver for killing the bobcat before it had a chance to attack others.
Since the bizarre incident, Gruver has faced a barrage of media interviews, most recently on the national Fox News TV channels.
Gruver drove down to Phoenix one day to provide interviews to all the local TV stations. Some outlets have made him out to be a powerful, tall, strapping guy, listing his height at 6 feet 8 inches tall. But the 61-year-old Gruver says he's more like 6 feet 1 inch tall, and he's disabled because of serious back problems. He attributes his actions to pure adrenaline.
"I'm not the strong man everybody is making me out to be," Gruver said.
He found out the hard way that he had to get rabies shots from the scratches even though he kept the bobcat from biting him.
Luckily, Gruver had a heavy shirt on, or his arm wounds could have been a lot worse. The series of rabies shots in his wounds hurt a lot more than the wounds themselves.
His side and leg hurt so badly he can't sit down. He's covered with one long bruise from his hip to his knee from falling backward.
But he has no plans to move somewhere closer to human aid and the human population.
"I love being in the wild," he said. "I can't stand the city, with all its crime."
Lately, when he has gone down to the Phoenix metro area out of necessity, he's been something of a celebrity.
The nurse who gave him his rabies shots just saw him on TV and wanted to hear his story. Then he had to tell it again to several people who recognized him when he stopped for lunch at the Village Inn.
Then he dropped by Fry's to pick up prescriptions, and - you guessed it - one of the pharmacy employees was telling two others Gruver's story right as he approached them.
"I said, 'This is too much,'" he related.
State Veterinarian Elisabeth Lawaczeck attributes the record-breaking numbers to at least two factors: an increasing human population and the cyclical nature of rabies.
"Once you get a rabid animal like that, it just goes from animal to animal until it dies off," added Cecil Newell, environmental health unit manager with the Yavapai County Community Health Services Department. He advised hikers to carry a walking stick to fend off rabid animals.
"Rabies can be kind of a cyclical disease," agreed Zen Mocarski of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "This year just happens to be the year for Yavapai County."
Despite the record year, the odds of encountering a rabid animal are extremely rare. Healthy wild animals generally run from humans.
PREVIOUS ATTACKS
Following is a recap of other rabid wildlife attacks on Yavapai County residents this year:
• A rabid fox attacked Prescott hiker Bill Ransom in the Granite Mountain area just west of Prescott on Feb. 5, just three months after another rabid fox attacked another hiker, Michelle Felicetta of Chino Valley, in the same area on Nov. 3, 2008.
Ransom beat back the fox with his walking stick, while the female victim had to jog about a mile back to her vehicle with the fox's jaws latched onto her arm. That was a strange enough incident to get her a spot on the David Letterman show.
• A rabid bobcat attacked three people in Cottonwood in March, including two people in a crowded saloon.
The bar's video monitor produced footage that gained fame all over the Internet. It showed one man bending down to take pictures of the bobcat with his cell phone camera. Not surprisingly, the bobcat attacked him.
• A rabid bobcat attacked a family walking along a riparian trail in Prescott Valley in April. Lisa Montonati pulled the bobcat off her daughter and held it down by the neck as she tried to keep it away from her two daughters and their friend, who threw rocks at it and kicked it in an attempt to kill it.
That bobcat escaped but wildlife and police officials quickly tracked it down and killed it.
Montonati suffered severe injuries to her right arm and had to undergo weeks of physical therapy.
Close encounters with bears, too Yavapai County residents also had an unusually high number of bear encounters in 2009.
However, none of the bears were rabid and they didn't attack any people.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department received 18 reports of bear sightings in Yavapai County this year, compared to only six calls in 2008 and zero in 2007.
"We've had a rash of wildlife-human interactions over the last seven months or so that are beyond anything we've ever experienced," said Bob Posey, regional supervisor for Game and Fish.
The Prescott region has great bear habitat and one of the highest densities of bears, said Ron Thompson, a large carnivore biologist with the Game and Fish Department.
Bears and other wildlife experienced a shortage of food and water this year, Thompson said. Until December, it was one of the driest years on record.
"To me, it was a bit of a wake-up call," Thompson said. "It's the community's job to prepare themselves to the reaction wildlife is going to have in the Southwest."
Game and Fish is interested in partnering with communities that want to take proactive, preventive measures to avoid bear conflicts in the future, he said. For example, the agency is working with Pinetop to get bear-proof garbage containers.
In at least three Yavapai County cases, the Arizona Game and Fish Department ended up shooting the bears out of concerns for public safety. One local wildlife officer said the last time he had to kill a bear was 2006 in Crown King.
"It is discouraging when a bear is lethally removed, but these types of encounters will continue as the population grows and humans continue to push deeper into the wildlife habitat," said Game and Fish spokesperson Zen Mocarski.
The first publicized incident of the year occurred at the southeastern edge of Prescott Valley on May 8, when a yearling male bear wandered into the fenced yard of the Grapevine Industrial Park along Fain Road.
Concerned for the bear's safety, an employee closed the gate and called authorities for help. In the meantime, the bear gulped down about a gallon of the water the employee left out for it.
Wildlife officers caught the 70-pound bear around the neck with a catch pole and took it to a relocation site. Unfortunately, while holding onto the bear again with the catch pole while they tried to put a tag on its ear, officers said the catch pole loop malfunctioned and the bear strangled to death.
Then in the Cornville area of the Verde Valley June 12-15, a yearling male roamed the neighborhoods for four days before wildlife managers decided they had to put him down.
State officials said he initially exhibited appropriate fear of humans, but within three days he was drinking from garden hoses, eating berries and looking in a home window. Then on the fourth day, he killed a goat and refused to run away from humans.
Later that same month on June 23, a full-grown male bear eluded wildlife officers and police officers trying to track and shoot it in the Yavapai Hills subdivision of east Prescott.
Wildlife officials said the bear must have been in the area to get human food, because they saw food outdoors at several residences. They said they decided to put down the bear when it made an aggressive move toward them during the chase. However, they couldn't get a clear safe shot at it.
Officials said they received more reports of a large bear in the area during subsequent weeks, and believed it was the same bear. For example, someone saw a large bear crossing Highway 69 at about 7:30 p.m. on June 25, about 200 yards east of Costco heading south toward Walker.
Several residents of private inholdings on Mingus Mountain spotted another full-grown male bear throughout much of June. Most of the mountain is part of the Prescott National Forest just northeast of Prescott Valley.
Wildlife officers caught and euthanized the bear on July 7, but they don't think it was the same bear they chased in Prescott June 23. They suspected the bear tried to get into at least five unsecured trash containers at remote cabins on Mingus between May 31 and June 23.
Prescott Unified School District Superindendent Kevin Kapp was among those who had an encounter with the bear. He and his wife were sleeping in a pop-up camper June 12 when the bear clawed at the window screen. When the bear went away, they drove to the camp owner's home only to find the bear pressing against the door screen of the home and tearing into a cooler on the porch.
After initially hiding in the cabin, Kapp went back outside with a can of mace to try to scare the bear off and get his dogs out of his truck, and the bear finally went away.
Wildlife officers said a smaller bear also tried to get into a cooler at another Mingus Mountain cabin on May 31, but the larger male scared it away.
A full-grown female bear wandered into Mayer on July 17, but wildlife officials decided to trap and release it somewhere else instead of euthanizing it.
A resident spotted the bear in a tree in his yard, which contains a tempting row of blackberry bushes.
Unfortunately, the bear walked about 50 miles to return to the populated region this fall, this time showing up on the northern fringes of Prescott Valley about an hour before sunrise Nov. 13.
Game and Fish wildlife officials decided to kill the bear this time around, partly because of a school bus stop in the area.
Officials mistakenly thought that other residents might have heard noises related to the bear foraging in the area overnight, but they still said the bear must have come to town to find human food.
"This repeat offender was by no means a candidate to be captured and released again," Posey said.
Game and Fish has no records of a bear ever killing anyone in Arizona, Thompson said.
Bears have bitten four people in the past 20 years, but no one suffered life-threatening injuries.
The worst incident occurred in 1996 when a bear severely mauled a teenage girl with food in her tent on Mt. Lemmon, Thompson related. Earlier that day, a Game and Fish wildlife manager had caught a bear in that area after setting up a trap in response to complaints about an aggressive bear in that campground. But the officer released the bear because campers said it wasn't the same bear. The girl's family sued Game and Fish and won $2.5 million.
That incident led Game and Fish to establish a written protocol for handling bears and mountain lions.
Game and Fish written guidelines allow wildlife managers to euthanize bears that exhibit "unacceptable behavior," including bears that continue to investigate high-human-use areas and bears that are in areas where children are present.
The main cause of bear conflicts is humans feeding wildlife, Thompson said. Once bears associate humans with food, they don't see humans as a threat. Feeding wildlife is illegal in the Phoenix area, but not rural Arizona.
The Game and Fish Department roughly estimates Arizona's bear population at 1,500-2,500, but the agency is working on a better estimate with the help of DNA in hair traps.
Posted: Friday, January 01, 2010
Article comment by:
NanC
Gary and Family, you should be grateful you were given a warning about a dangerous animal. Your four children could be seriously injured or killed by one of these cute little kitty kats...they are not like domestic cats and especially when they are rabid or cornered. With the weird city attitude you carry around it's apparent you don't have a clue about country living, maybe you should go back where you came from.
Posted: Friday, December 25, 2009
Article comment by:
George and Family
Oh ya, that is exactly what we all want to see in our local newspaper - a picture of a dead animal!!! Now maybe the Courier would like to explain the picture to my four children who all started crying and screaming when they saw the picture. Come on Courier, how about more responsible reporting!!!!
Posted: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Article comment by:
Read the Darwin awards
Chris:
Unfortunatley you can not trust everyone who carries a gun. Rabid is what you can see to some. "oh it was rabid, it ran at us from the top of that tree, Cute though.. Can I have it to mount”? Ever read the Dawin awards?
Posted: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Article comment by:
trippetta
Please don't encourage people who have little or no skill in shooting to carry handguns, a walking stick (and good hiking boots) will suffice for most.(Besides there are those who could not hit the broad side of a barn with a handgun, myself included, so what good would it do?)
Posted: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Article comment by:
Chris
Carry a hiking stick? I guess if a stick is all you own then carry it, but there are much better means to ward off an aggressive animal. Probably not politically correct to encourage people to carry guns. We don't really want to kill these rabid animals we just want to fend them off with sticks. HAHA I really get a kick out of our society...
