Polar bear kills last villager

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 10.16.03

[mhking]

A polar bear has killed the last villager on Russia's Vrangel island off the northern Chukotka peninsula, scientists at a local reserve said today.

The reserve's workers attempted to save Vasilina Alpaun, who was attacked on her own doorstep, but were too late.

The Ushakovskoye village had been abandoned since 1997, when its inhabitants were moved to the peninsula to make way for the bear reserve, but Alpaun, 25, returned to her old home shortly afterwards.

Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the animal.

[lawdude]

Don't you just hate it when this happens. Another needless polar bear crime.

Perhaps if they gave the bear prozac, he would not be polar?

[Shooter 2.5]

That could never happen today. The bear would still be going through security by the time the plane would take off.

[Judith Anne]

Maybe that's why the pilot left the plane's engines running...

[4mycountry]

Deeply.

[Malacoda]

Wait. I sense that we've found the location for the next PETA convention!

[Judith Anne]

Dad said he couldn't even see the bear when the pilot first spotted it, it was that far away. He said they were laughing about it, after they finished being near totally panicked.

I saw a stuffed polar bear over twelve feet tall, it used to be at a Famous-Barr store in NW Plaza, St. Louis County. That thing was too big to believe...

[Waco]

"Sing softly to it." I suggest "Swing low, sweet chariot."

[RightWhale]

the woman most likely provoked the animal.

They killed a polar bear on the North Slope a couple years that was just minding its own business smashing into the cabin through the side wall approximately where the window was.

[nuconvert]

LOL

[RightWhale]

the bear almost got the plane!

They do get the plane sometimes. Not good for the plane.

[GeorgiaYankee]

Hey! Why wasn't that villager on the endangered species list?

[jwalburg]

lol

[jwalburg]

Quincy's cousin

[umgud]

She shoulda cut a hole in the ice, and then surround it with peas. Then when the bear comes to inspect it and bends over to get a pea........ just kick him in the ice-hole.

[Verginius Rufus]

Wrangel Island is off the north coast of Siberia, very far east--further east than some of the Aleutian Islands. I saw a program once about pygmy mammoths that survived there long after mammoths had become extinct elsewhere. I don't know if polar bears had anything to do with their demise.

[MARTIAL MONK]

NEVER kick a bear when it's trying to take a pea.

[hedgetrimmer]

Environmentalists stink! They kick people off their land for "preserves", they have no right to do that. They are trying to kick a rancher off his ranch in New Mexico right now so it can become part of a "preserve". No wonder this person wanted to go back, it was her home.

[hedgetrimmer]

Islands don't "become" bear reserves. Greedy people kick rural people off their land to make it into "preserves".

[TX Bluebonnet]

It must have been Bi-polar!

[GeronL]

well, yes. But when the bears show up.. its probably time to end the protests