Stephen Colbert gets it right: #1 danger

[calmloki]

Posted some of these pics a while ago, but here's the Mail with a few different pics and a bit of the story:

Chilling game of hide and seek with a hungry polar bear | Mail Online

 

[Dawg52]

#1 danger

Or for a child, simply playing with your dog. BTW, this is me as a kid.

 

[bssc]

This is why I don't believe in the right to arm bears. They are dangerous enough already.

 

[haha]

Or for a child, simply playing with your dog. BTW, this is me as a kid.

That dog belongs in the NFL.

Ha

 

[bssc]

That dog belongs in the NFL.

Ha

Detroit has already signed him.

 

[FinanceDude]

Posted some of these pics a while ago, but here's the Mail with a few different pics and a bit of the story:

Chilling game of hide and seek with a hungry polar bear | Mail Online

Nice photo journalist, how come he didn't help out?

 

[calmloki]

Nice photo journalist, how come he didn't help out?

Ah - there was a big bear in the way?

 

[FinanceDude]

Ah - there was a big bear in the way?

So, he continued to snap photos so that if the guy died he could give a nice photo album to his grieving family........

 

[calmloki]

So, he continued to snap photos so that if the guy died he could give a nice photo album to his grieving family........

Shoot FD - I don't know - maybe thee or me might have run to the corner of Tundra and Permafrost to call 911, or maybe shoved our Kodiak digicams down the gaping mah of Mr. Furry. Maybe not. Maybe photojournalists have some sort of ethic that has them report only, not get involved (i'm thinking photo essays of little dying lion cub orphans or war). Maybe the cameraperson was shouting as they shot pics.

Really though, i suspect the cameracritter was laughing like mad - frontier humour is made of sterner stuff - it's funny since he got away.

 

[kyounge1956]

So, he continued to snap photos so that if the guy died he could give a nice photo album to his grieving family........

Shoot FD - I don't know - maybe thee or me might have run to the corner of Tundra and Permafrost to call 911, or maybe shoved our Kodiak digicams down the gaping mah of Mr. Furry. Maybe not. Maybe photojournalists have some sort of ethic that has them report only, not get involved (i'm thinking photo essays of little dying lion cub orphans or war). Maybe the cameraperson was shouting as they shot pics.

I expect the photographer was shooting from a long way off using a telephoto lens and perhaps was not in a position to come to the surveyor's assistance. I don't know if photographers customarily go armed in the tundra, but if he had a gun I hope he had put the camera on automatic and was reaching for it in case the situation got really desperate. But I would think taking a shot under the circumstances would be a last resort—unless the photog was also a sharpshooter, with both of them moving so rapidly, he might have been just as likely to hit the surveyor as the bear.

Really though, i suspect the cameracritter was laughing like mad - frontier humour is made of sterner stuff - it's funny since he got away.

There was a comment at the linked newspaper site from someone who laughed at the pictures and thought them "cute" and "funny". I guess this shows that I am a city slicker through and through, because I cannot imagine being amused by someone's desperate attempts to escape from a creature fully capable of killing him, and I'm glad the man in the pictures got away without life-threatening injuries.