‘I used to be bitten by a black bear on my arse – a few of it needed to be eliminated’
A woman says a mother black bear bit her on the arse on her near-daily hike, forcing medics to remove flesh and leaving three punctures because the missing tooth mark sank into her phone
Maggie Schwartz had a wild encounter(Image: Instagram)
A woman bitten on the bum by a black bear has told how she fought it off with her feet. In an unlikely twist of fate, her phone may have saved her from even worse injuries.
Jackson, Wyoming local Maggie Schwartz, a lawyer, was hiking Teton Pass on August 10, walking her dog Marta and another pup along the History Trail – a route she says she hikes almost every day – when horror struck. Schwartz revealed she rounded a corner and suddenly came face-to-face with a black bear cub tucked in bushes.
“Within fractions of a second” the cub’s mother charged out of thick brush and smashed her to the ground.
The big black bear bit her (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)
“I must have flipped myself over onto my back,” Schwartz told Outside Magazine, “because I remember being on my back and her continuing towards me”.
She further recalled: “I put my feet up on her chest and was screaming and fumbling around.” As she lay trapped, the bear bit her on the buttocks – leaving three deep puncture wounds.
Schwartz said she managed to grab her bear spray and blast it into the animal’s face. “She turned around and left immediately,” she said – with her Fitbit later showing a sharp spike in heart rate.
She still can’t believe she got the spray out in time. “I’m thinking maybe she looked up to see where the dogs were, which gave me the chance,” she said.
The bear fled downhill. Schwartz went uphill. “I wasn’t really feeling pain at that point,” she said. At the car park, she was helped by a local ski patroller.
They are massive teeth (stock image)
Schwartz said: “I was really embarrassed that the bite was on my butt and that this had just happened. I didn’t really want to show him, but he was so professional.”
When her mother arrived, “I just started bawling,” she added. “I completely lost it.”
She then walked out of the woods and was treated at St John’s Health in Jackson. Doctors treated puncture wounds and heavy scratches across her thighs, back, neck and elbow.
With bear hair embedded deep in her skin, a nurse had to remove a small section of flesh. Her wounds were left open without stitches to reduce infection risk, and she was given a tetanus shot and antibiotics.
Investigators reportedly noticed her wounds showed three tooth marks – but a bear bite usually leaves four. It was later concluded the bear had ripped off her back pocket, and the “missing” tooth mark was pressed into the cracked phone screen, which likely shielded her flesh.
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