As the Olympic biathlon champion glided closer, seamlessly, on her skis, with the quickness of icy lightning, Colonel Stierlitz noticed that the statuesque blonde, possessing the physique of a young Amazon, already held her rifle at the ready. Sweating inside his heavy bear-suit disguise, Stierlitz pondered that never before had his situation been so dire… And then, suddenly, just as he was giving up hope, without any warning, the rifle-totiing ski beauty flopped to the ground, as if whacked by some unseen hand…”
(From “The Untold Adventures of Colonel Stierlitz”)
Dear Readers:
Today I have this thrilling adventure story from the official Russian news agency, RIA. The context, as we know, is that Finland recently joined NATO. Which makes the patrolling of the mutual border all the more important to both sides.
Distances being so vast, and with so many Russian soldiers at the front, the Russian military has had to resort to enlisting bears to patrol the border. [not really, I made that up…]
The heroine of our story is a Finnish border patrol agent named Erika Jänkä. Erika also happens to be an Olympic-level bi-athlete. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean that she is bi-sexual, only that she cross-country skis and shoots at the same time!)
The 27-year-old Finnish athlete told the newspaper Kuhmolainen about a rather alarming encounter which took place during one of her patrols. Russian pundits believe that the story was meant to evoke Russophobic emotions in the readers. But mostly, it just evokes laughter. Especially since no bears nor humans were actually harmed in the course of this encounter.
From the story it is somewhat ambiguous whether Erika was performing her patrol while jogging, or was just out jogging for its own sake. Since this is almost summer (the incident happened on May 26), I doubt if she was on skis, although I have to say, I am not super-familiar with the Finnish climate rules. Do they still have some snow in those parts? Never mind, we will stipulate that she was jogging (она совершала пробежку). And that her run took place not far from a border crossing called Vartius.
Suddenly she noticed, not even 10 meters away, an “enraged” bear. Nobody knows why the bear was so angry, but it started to approach her menacingly, with a wild look in its eyes.
Erika made an immediate decision. She dropped to the ground and pretended to be dead. What happened next was indescribable. She described to the newspaper: “I could feel how the bear was sniffing at my ankles and feet. I thought to myself, Is this really the end? Fortunately for her, the bear left her alone and wandered away. She was unharmed, and the bear was unharmed.
Erika wrote on her social media that this encounter will long leave an impression on her memory. “From it I drew some lessons about how to interact with nature, and with animals. And I would like to thank my colleagues, family, and friends, who have supported me throughout this ordeal.”
The Russian commenters to this piece are having none of it. Some draw attention to the “enraged bear” meme and consider it Russophobic. The Finnish assumption is that all bears are Russian, and are very angry, to boot. Angry, out of control, etc.
Other commenters make vulgar remarks, which I hesitate to repeat; some implying that the bear had its way with the maiden; others riffing on the smell of Erika’s feet, and what such a stench might have done to the bear. Others countering, “No, bears actually appreciate carrion.” In Erika’s defense, she is an athlete, and she was out running, so nobody should have expected her tootsies to smell like roses.
But the main moral of the story, which patriotic Russian commenters draw is this one: “NATO should do exactly as Erika did. When they encounter the Russian Bear, they need to fall down and play dead.”
Awful Avalanche 
She probably just wasn’t very tasty.
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Or the bear just wasn’t hungry. Having previously gorged on two other Finnish border guards who were actually standing at their posts, doing their job!
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“with a wild look in its eyes.”
I live and worked in bear country for 35 years, have shot and eaten many a bear (excellent meat when prepared properly) and had encounters many times, during hunting, in our garden, etc., but I have yet to see an enraged look in any bears’ eyes, be it grizzly of black…
And if bear is enraged, not by the look in his eyes, but by threatening behaviour that would incapacitate you because you will shit your pants at precisely this moment, you might encounter two things – this from stories I was told, never having been in a position to have had to shit my pants in such an encounter) – he/she attacks you, or he/she decides you are not worth the effort, puny human, de-threatens and walks away, but without sniffing any part of you.
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PS: playing dead is an option, the inner command: assume the fetal position. However, I do not know if it works very well once you have riled up the bear completely.
One of the mean things some bears do, attack you in your tent while sleeping, and taking a bite out of you. Happened not too long ago to a Canuck prospector somewhere along the Yukon/BC boundary. They found some remains and a quite torn apart tent. I guess the bear did not know how to operate a zipper.
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Yikes! Don’t they sell a bear-repellent, or something like that?
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Of course you can buy bear repellent, but you have to be awake to pull the trigger.
The main thing is: no food, no dirty dishes in the tent. Store the food in boxes or in your vehicle, or if out on horseback, hang the stuff off a tree branch in bags, and in pack boxes. I dont’t think the bears haven’t made the connection yet between a rope and an unreachable bag, but they certainly can smash a pack box.
Rather have the smash that, at leas 20′ from the tent, instead your precious body.
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Here’s your Wooster parody:
http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.com/2017/12/bertie-in-foreign-legion.html?m=1
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Raghead, I read your story. It’s absolutely brilliant and filled me with joy. That’s Bertie and Jeeves to a tee. And where better to put this duo than in the French Legion? Beau Wilberforce, indeed. Some of my fave passages:
“No, no. Those things that live in marshes and look like pigs that began on a banquet and forgot to stop.”
“I think you’re thinking of hippopotamuses,” I’d made the mistake of saying.
A face with bright red lips, hair piled up like a sleeping blonde boa constrictor, and a nasal accent.
“You’re right, Jeeves,” I said, an immense weight rolling off my mind, as though someone had come to that blighter who was carrying the world on his shoulders and offered to take the weight off. You know the one I mean. They named railway timetables after him, or something. “So let’s pack up, and then what ho for France!”
“Yes, sir. But, remember, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
“What?”
“It is from Horace, sir. Sweet and becoming it is to die for one’s country.”
“Well, whoever that cove Horace is, you can tell him from me that of all the fatheaded, idiotic, blithering rubbish I have ever heard, including Gussy Fink-Nottle’s attempts to hold forth on his newts in the Drones Club, this is the absolute, undisputed champion. It takes the gold, silver, and bronze, and if there were platinum and diamond medals, it would take them, too, as easily as anyone might swallow one of Aunt Dahlia’s chef Anatole’s famous dinners.”
“That is, unfortunately, impossible, sir. The poet Horace has been dead several centuries.”
“So did he die for his country?” I asked curiously.
“No, sir. His later years were somewhat indelicate.”
Look at these beastly things, Jeeves. Can a normal human being with teeth that aren’t like those of a man-eating crocodile ever consume one of them? Have you ever thought of that?” [see, at least there are crocodiles in YOUR story!]
But best of all, this editorial on the reputation of the royal family:
Jeeves coughed politely. “I suggested, sir, that anyone as obviously stupid and incompetent as you were could not possibly survive at large unless he were part of the Royal family. I suggested that it was clear that you could never hope to hold down any employment on your own behalf, which furthermore meant, that since you were not confined to an institution, that you were clearly of royal parentage.”
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Back in the day every Scandinavian milk maid learnt that if they ever met a bear they should raise their skirt and show their private parts. The bear, being such an intelligent and virtuous animal, would then turn away in shame.
So I kind of suspect that the bear actually was a man in a bear-suit hoping for tradition to be followed.
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For your further delectation — from Wikipedia on Vartius and including the highly original spelling:
“Trivia
While training in the end of May 2023, biathlete Erika Jänkä (27) met to bears, felt one on her feet, laid down on the ground, movingkess pretending to be dead and the bears went off.[3]”
So now, it seems as if there was more than one bear. Sniff sniff, “Nope, that’s not Baby,” said Papa to Mama. And besides, she’s a blonde.”
I liked the Colonel Stierlitz story better myself.
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Lordy, is wikipedia just google-translated now? Two bears? Why not three? And did Goldilocks eat their porridge, without admitting to it?
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It seems that this story was picked up by a war correspondent working for AP:
Erika Jänkä was out jogging when she spotted a group of 16 bears in a forest clearing. As the world famous “bi” approached the clearing the bears suddenly threw themselves to the ground playing dead. Miss Jänkä jogged calmly through group of shivering bears and said loud and clear: “I’ll be back”. When she returned after a 100 km sprint the bears had all fled.
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That sounds more plausible than my version. But I also saw another version, in which there were only 3 bears; and in which Miss Jänkä crossed the border into Bear Territory, sat at their table, ate their porridge, and slept in their bed. Before being discovered and tossed back onto her own side of the border.
The bears were, like, “Next time apply for a visa, honeychile!”
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Everyone should read ‘Finland’s War of Choice’, about the Finnish-Nazi alliance during what the Finns euphemistically call the ‘Continuation War.’
I’m just 40 pages in. The author, retired US paratroop officer Hendrik Lunde, has already meticulously documented the meetings, discussions and negotiations that led the Finns to ally themselves with Germany and open a northern front of Operation Barbarossa.
So my theory is, the bear sniffed Erika, then withdrew, sickened by the stench of Nazi collaborator that she inherited.
But the man-in-bear-suit theory has its charm, too.
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The sad thing is that Russians and Finno-Ugric peoples have lived side by side and intermarried since ancient times. Their DNA’s are intertwined. I really can’t see a reason why they shouldn’t get along.
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My suggestion she ‘inherited’ the stench wasn’t serious. You’re right of course. There’s the whole Karelian region of Russia to prove it.
Partly I’m just overreacting to matters that I’m only just learning about (ie the Finns’ eager, very proactive role in Barbarossa.)
From Wikipedia:
‘The idea of annexing East Karelia to Finland as part of a “Greater Finland” had wide support in newly-independent Finland after 1917. It was especially popular during the Russo-Finnish Continuation War of 1941–1944, when such annexation seemed feasible in the wake of an expected German conquest of the Soviet Union. Finnish forces occupied most of East Karelia from 1941 to 1944. The war meant hardship for the local ethnic-Russian civilians, including forced labour and internment in prison camps as enemy aliens. After the Moscow Armistice of September 1944, calls for the annexation of East Karelia to Finland virtually disappeared.’
I find the Finns’ fear, after the Winter War, that the USSR would eventually come back and ‘finish the job’ somewhat understandable. That’s much less true today: Putin is no Stalin.
Today’s Russophobia, I think, is a deliberate creation of NATO propaganda and Finland’s compliant elite. I think it’s time to re-Finlandize the place.
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Totally agree. It’s much harder for people to get along when the world elites are driving them at each others throats. I can allude to some psychological-sociological experiments that were done in the past, when children arbitrarily separated into different groups by authority figures, changed from friends to enemies. It’s a very old game.
Having said that, there are some reasonable arguments that the Finnish “mentality” (speaking broadly) is very compatible with fascism; given that they are an ethnically homogeneous people and fairly tribal in their thinking.
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Well, now you got me started! My curiosity was piqued, and Yandex search gave me some very nice links:
What species of bear live in Russia? (PHOTOS)
https://www.rbth.com/travel/334725-bear-species-russia
Types of Russian Bear
https://www.expresstorussia.com/experience-russia/types-of-russian-bear.html
If I recall correctly (and if the border guard’s story was indeed true), she was probably very wise to just lay down “dead”. Bears are difficult to impossible to outrun, and the more aggressive types — e.g., grizzlies in the US — perceive running as a prey behavior and respond accordingly.
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Awww! that brown bear baby is so cute! When Erika reported that the bear was “enraged”, I wonder if might have been a Mama bear with a cub nearby. Since Erika was jogging, maybe the mom saw her as a threat to her cub. Even if she wasn’t carrying a gun at the time.
Then, when Erika played dead, I am pretty sure she didn’t fool the Mama bear one bit, but maybe the Mama bear took this performance as “I won’t harm you or your cub,” and decided to back off.
Anyhow, I am just glad that it all worked out. Humans should never knowingly mess with nature.
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So, she survived the sniffing bear. Let’s see how she does with Joe Biden…
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Haha! The difference is that the bear wanted to sniff her feet; but Biden wants to sniff her hair. Whose fetish is weirder, you may ask…
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