Kathleen Baran will be fine, thanks very much for asking, despite a black bear chomping down on her arm through her tent wall near South Fork, and having to unclamp the marauder’s jaws by punching it in the face.
But there are a couple of things Baran wants inquiring minds to know. First, no, she absolutely did not have food in her tent that might have attracted the bear, despite what she says Colorado and Arizona health officials said about her while exchanging information.
And second, a bear bite described in news releases as a bland “puncture wound” actually hurts like a mother … elephant sitting on your arm. She thought she had broken a bone. Or two.
That said, Baran, an experienced international solo hiker and camper, feels lucky today, after Friday’s early-morning attack at a campground she’d pulled into to get a few hours rest while on a road trip. Lucky the blind attack wasn’t from a wolf, as she first suspected when startled awake by the grip of sharp teeth through tent fabric. And fortunate it was her arm and not something else.
“I’m very lucky because he could have easily just chomped down on my head and not my arm if I had not put my arm up,” said Baran, speaking by phone from the remote area of Arizona she calls home. “I mean, it could have kept on attacking. I didn’t know what he was doing because I was stuck inside my tent. That was the worst part of it. I couldn’t see where he was, what his next move was going to be.”
Read more from Michael Booth at ColoradoSun.com
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