Tag Archives: Eaten

A literary review of my polar bear attack thriller, with all the condescending attitude you’d expect

For your amusement, I present a book review of Eaten from an Austrian academic specializing in contemporary literature by the name of Michael Fuchs. I came across his book chapter last week, buried deep within Google offerings, while looking for something else. I laughed all the way through it.

Here is the abstract:

This chapter draws on Margaret Atwood’s vision of Canada as a Gothic space, examining how contemporary texts continue to invoke imagery of human and animal as antagonists competing for the same space. Fuchs analyzes a corpus of three “bear horror” fictions, the horror film Backcountry (2014) and two novels, The Bear (2014) by Claire Cameron and Susan J. Crockford’s near-future polar bear-themed Eaten (2015). It argues that animal predation on humans provides a powerful symbolic vehicle for bridging the human–animal divide, as it overrides the theory of human exceptionalism, offering a critical view of the entanglement of humans and nonhumans in the Anthropocene.”

A friend that I shared the essay with commented:

“My favourite sentence (new word of the day, class, please use “diegetic” in a sentence):

These constant slippages between ontological levels puzzle the reader in ways similar to how Anna is confused by the goings-on in the diegetic reality.” [pg. 263]

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Polar bear books for kids and young adults are the perfect antidote for climate anxiety

In this short interview clip with Friends of Science director Michelle Stirling, I talk about Polar Bear Facts & Myths (for kids 7 and up) and EATEN, my science-based polar bear attack thriller that’s appropriate for older teens and young adults. Both are available in paperback and ebook formats, while the paperback version of Polar Bear Facts & Myths is also available in French, German, Dutch, and Norwegian.

Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change is also suitable for teens and young adults and is fully referenced.

Lingering late season sea ice brings polar bear visitor to northern Newfoundland

Polar bear season for St. Lunaire-Griquet Newfoundland ran from 6 March to 10 June this year — three long months when polar bears came to visit the community during the season when bears are usually occupied with feeding on young seals and mating.

Newfoundland polar bear 10 June 2018_Iceberg Festival Committee_Thresa Burden photo

Below is a map of the region: St. Lunaire-Griquet is at the tip of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, just north of St. Anthony (where some of the action in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, takes place):

Saint Lunaire Griquet Newfoundland location_Google maps

As of yesterday (June 10), when the last sighting of a fat and healthy polar bear took place, there was still quite a mass of thick first year ice (>1.2 m thick) off the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, amongst a field of icebergs:

Hudson Bay North daily stage of development 2018 June 10 ice warning

The first sighting in the area this year was back in early March, which I blogged about here. Fortunately, the Davis Strait bears that occupy the East Coast pack ice are usually well feed at this time of year and seldom pose a serious threat to humans: the fact that visitors ashore are often easily pursuaded to leave (or do so on their own) suggests they are more curious than hungry.

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In case you missed it…writer James Delingpole puts my novel in context

From Saturday 8 October, English journalist, author and broadcaster James Delingpole (via his Breitbart column) writes about polar bears:

delingpole-8-oct-2016-headline

The Truth About Polar Bears: They’re a Dangerous, Out of Control Pest…

Crockford is the author of a Jaws-style thriller on ravenous polar bears killing humans called Eaten. At least one polar scientist who has read it considers its “science-based scenario” to be frighteningly plausible.

In field-level polar bear management circles, people don’t talk about the kind of scenario that forms the premise of this novel as an “if”. Instead, they describe it as a “when” and they are not looking forward to it.

Eek.

Eek is right! The book has been nightmare-inducing for many readers. Put EATEN on your Christmas shopping list (all purchase options here). It makes a great gift and supports the work I do here. Colleagues have said their young adult children really enjoyed it.

[I’m reminded of Christmas since we had turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend – a fabulous gathering of all the local family at my place, including the two (!!) grandbabies, both of whom are now walking. I’ll be sending Nico to Churchill before you know it]

[And FYI, I’ve updated the Svalbard “problem no one is talking about” post with statistics by year (1974-2015) for polar bears killed to protect life and property]

Canadian Prime Minister risked being EATEN by polar bears on Fogo this year

This week (Tuesday 9 August), British Columbia’s Knowledge Network is re-running the 2015 documentary about the revitalization of Fogo Island, the Newfoundland location featured in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN. It’s called Strange and Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island and highlights the Fogo Island Inn, where our recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apparently spent a weekend earlier this year – gambling he could avoid a lethal encounter with a hungry polar bear when fictional others haven’t been so lucky.

Fogo Island special on Knowledge Network_9 Aug 2016

The Prime Minister and his family stayed at the Fogo Island Inn over Easter (25-28 March 2016). Did Justin Trudeau know they could have been EATEN by a polar bear at that time of year? Were members of his security detail actually prepared for a polar bear attack?

Did Trudeau’s advisors do any preparatory reading? I mean, seriously: aside from reading my terrifying science-based novel (where polar bear attacks take place right outside the Fogo Island Inn where the Trudeaus were staying), Fogo (see maps below) has a recent history of polar bear visits.

Most bears come ashore on Newfoundland in late March-early April, although this year one came ashore on Fogo in late January. Another was shot in early May this year as it advanced on an RCMP officer near one of the artist’s studios on Fogo. I guess I’ll have to send a complimentary copy to Ottawa…because next time, what with polar bear numbers increasing in that region, this high-profile family might not be so lucky.

“What-if” indeed…the risks they took are mind-boggling. Continue reading

Sharks off Cape Cod vs. my polar bear attack thriller – an unnerving parallel

I watched an episode of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week last Friday and I have to admit, it gave me a terrifying déjà vu moment.

SharkAttacks seal cape cod 2012 video capture

Specifically, it was the episode called “Shark Bait” (1 July 2016) – about the potentially explosive problem of booming populations of grey seals around Cape Cod (NE US, Massachusetts), the increasing numbers of great white sharks that are moving in to hunt them (see trailers here and here), and the thousands of relatively blasé humans that play and surf in the shallows nearby. UPDATE: video now available on Youtube, see below:

What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve already imagined what could go wrong – in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN.

The parallels of EATEN with this developing shark situation are more than a little unnerving and makes it clear that my piece of speculative fiction may apply to more than polar bears. [ebooks still on sale for 99 cents – see direct links at bottom of this post]

See the details on the great white shark/seal conundrum below and decide for yourself.
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Polar bears are not bloodthirsty killers, says biologist [just don’t forget your gun]

According to records compiled by James Wilder, a US Forest Service biologist, there were only 20 fatal polar bear attacks (out of 73 total attacks) between 1870 and 2014.

That’s what the 14 June 2016 account in the Anchorage Daily News says (“Sea ice has been keeping polar bears and humans apart — until now”). But I think it’s kind of delusional to suggest that a list of recorded attacks, spanning 145 years throughout the Arctic (including Russia), have captured more than a fraction of all actual polar bear attacks – given that many Arctic communities didn’t have reliable communications in the 1970s (let alone the 1870s). How about all the Inuit and Siberian hunters over the years who failed to return home because they were killed and eaten by a polar bear – unbeknownst to anyone?

Alaska PB USGS_marked

Wilder presents these numbers as a basis for saying how concerned he is that a longer open-water season in the Arctic could increase the number of attacks by polar bears – and he’s right, that’s a valid concern now that the global population of bears is so high. Many polar bears plus people in a confined area is never a comfortable situation, as the people of Churchill, Manitoba have learned.

But declining sea ice is not the only scenario that could lead to an onslaught of hungry bears and a slew of fatal attacks, as my new science-based novel EATEN highlights. The truth is that if polar bears don’t get enough food in the spring – for any reason – the ice off the beaches of Arctic communities gives polar bears easy access to human prey. If that happens, people had better be prepared – because doors and windows won’t necessarily stop a determined polar bear.

EATEN ebook sale 2016 susancrockford_dot_com

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Colleague says EATEN possibly a real service to polar bear conservation

My last post, on the up-coming International Bear Conference in Anchorage, presents the perfect backdrop for highlighting a wonderfully unbiased review of my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, penned by a prominent Canadian polar bear researcher who is utterly convinced that future sea ice loss is the biggest threat to the species (and a former student of the grand-daddy of all polar bear researchers, Ian Stirling).

June summer reading sale image3

Here is what polar bear-human interaction specialist Douglas Clark had to say about my novel in his Amazon review (note I did not send Doug a review copy because he did not request one – he bought it himself – so I had no idea this was coming):

Thought-provoking, and possibly a real service to polar bear conservation

His detailed thoughts on the book below.
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RCMP shot fearless polar bear that came ashore on Fogo Island, Newfoundland

Just look at the polar bear on the cover of my new novel (right sidebar) and image that bear coming towards you with no intention of stopping. That’s what a Newfoundland RCMP officer faced yesterday – and he did what he had to do.

Fogo polar bear shot_CTV May 2 2016

This is the usual time for polar bear visits to northern Newfoundland but this one had a sad ending. The bear that came ashore at Deep Cove (where some of the action in my novel EATEN takes place, near the artist studio pictured in the photo shown above) on Fogo Island (map below) was killed by RCMP due to fears for public safety when it kept approaching officers even after warning shots were fired.

Maps and quotes from the 2 May CTV report below:

UPDATE 4 May 2016: more detailed (and accurate) information added below from a new CBC report – apparently, the bear was a large juvenile male, not an adult as originally reported, and was larger than initial reports indicated.

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Harp seal: most abundant Arctic seal is an undervalued polar bear prey species

The harp seal is the most abundant seal species in the northern hemisphere (estimated to number more than 9 million animals – that’s more harps than ringed seals) but are found only in the North Atlantic. Partly because they give birth on mobile pack ice, harps have their pups earlier in the season than all other Arctic seals, which means that in some regions, they are a critical food source for polar bears that have eaten little over the winter months.

Harp seal pup_DFO Newfoundland

Although young ringed seals are considered the primary prey of polar bears throughout the Arctic, young harp seals undoubtedly represent an increasingly important resource for populations of Davis Strait, East Greenland and Kara Sea bears.

Most of the harp seals in the NW Atlantic/Atlantic Canada (about 80% of them) have their pups off Newfoundland and Labrador, an area known as the “Front” (the location of my polar bear attack novel, EATEN: special deals all this week). Harps seals at the Front now provide a huge prey base for polar bears of the large (and possibly still growing) Davis Strait subpopulation (photo below courtesy DFO Canada).

There are an estimated 7.4 million harps in Atlantic Canada today (range 6.5-8.3m), an exponential increase over the early 1980s, when perhaps only half a million so remained.  Pagophilus groenlandicus was assigned a conservation status of ‘Least Concern’ by the IUCN Red List in June last year (Kovacs 2015), when it was estimated that the global population size of the harp seal was greater than 9 million animals and probably growing1, 2 due to reduced human hunting:

“…harp seals have been harvested for thousands of years but currently the population is large and the number of animals harvested is declining.” [my bold]

Photographers and animial rights activists love cute, fluffy harp seal pups and rarely mention the carnage that goes on in spring as polar bears devour the naive youngsters. See the video below (from 2008), for an example of the cuteness factor.

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