Canadian Survives Wilderness Ordeal on Rotting Meat

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Ken HildebrandA Canadian man survived 96 hours pinned under his all-terrain vehicle in the Rocky Mountains by eating rotting animal carcasses, drinking melted snow and thinking of his grandchildren, he said on Monday.

He said he was checking animal traps on January 8 in an area about 80 miles southwest of Calgary, where ranchers had complained of wolves preying on livestock. The vehicle hit a rock, throwing him off and settling on his legs.

Ken Hildebrand was trapped face down for four days and three nights in the Crowsnest Pass area of southwestern Alberta, where he tried numerous ways to free himself in below-freezing temperatures.

Throughout the ordeal, he kept wolves and coyotes away by blowing on an emergency whistle.

"I thought of my family and God and that was it," Hildebrand, a paramedic, told Reuters from his hospital bed in Lethbridge, Alberta.

He was finally rescued from the wreck on a little-used trail in the foothills by hikers.

Source: OttawaCitizen
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Comments

Anonymous said…
The guy was a trapper. He got a taste of what it's like to be a trapped animal in pain, dying alone in the cold. He almost had to saw his own leg off? How many animals had to do that in order to save their own lives, which are as precious to them as Hildebrand's is to him? And animals presumably don't have false impressions of their own immortality like humans do. I hope he learned his lesson; I hope he saw that it was instant karma come to bite him on the butt, and that he isn't so full of his own self-importance to realise the similarity between his ordeal and that of the animals whose lives he has taken so callously in the past.
23 January, 2008 04:18
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