Ellensburg man recalls bear biting his ear through tent

“The first thing I remember is popping up super fast and I knew something was right there,” Holmes said.

At that point, Holmes couldn’t feel the blood dripping down his neck.

ELLENSBURG — With only four hours of sleep, Rob Holmes, 24, of Ellensburg was jolted awake — by what he wasn’t sure.

The rain was pouring down hard on the tent where he and his friend were sleeping at 4 a.m. Monday. It was difficult to hear much of anything.

The pair arrived around midnight, set up camp and went to sleep to get in an early day of fly fishing near St. Regis, Mont.

But something woke him up.

“The first thing I remember is popping up super fast and I knew something was right there,” Holmes said.

At that point, Holmes couldn’t feel the blood dripping down his neck.

“I just started yelling,” Holmes said. The noise caused whatever it was to retreat. He could hear it moving in the wet grass.

Holmes woke up his friend, Brandon Hurst, saying something got him.

“He thought it was a spider,” Holmes said. “He told me to go sleep in the truck. I told him, ‘No, something got me.’”

Hurst retrieved a flashlight and began looking around the tent. He saw two holes in the tent directly above where Holmes was sleeping.

Holmes had been rapidly turning his head as he, too, searched the tent. That’s when he started to feel something pulling at his ear.

“It was slapping the back of my neck,” Holmes said. It was his right earlobe, hanging by a small section of skin. He looked down and saw blood that had dripped down his neck and chest and onto his blankets.

“I asked him if we should go to the hospital,” Holmes said.

The answer was yes.

Holmes had just been bitten by a black bear.

Curiosity

Holmes has been hunting since he was able to pull back 40 pounds on a bow.

“I’ve been around the woods all my life,” Holmes said. “I’m familiar with it all.”

That’s why Holmes was prepared. His campsite was clean - not a stitch of food to attract bears.

“We didn’t even have a granola bar,” Holmes said.

Park rangers say the bear was attracted to the area by a neighboring site. The site was abandoned and food had been left behind.

The same bear wandered over to Holmes’ site, taking a bite at his clean cooler.

Holmes didn’t discover the bite marks until he got home.

“I knew it had to be hanging around the camp,” Holmes said, who washed the cooler out prior to the trip. “All that was inside the cooler was a gallon of water and worms. It wasn’t going off smell anymore. It was going off habit.”

To the bear, human coolers equalled food. And, maybe, so did the tent where Holmes and his friend were sleeping.

His head was near the side of the tent where where the bear decided to investigate.

Instead of food, the bear got a chunk of Holmes’ ear, then ran off.

21 stitches

It took 21 stitches at a Missoula, Mont., hospital to get Holmes’ ear back together. He couldn’t wait to get it over with.

“I knew I was OK,” Holmes said. “There has been worse stuff all the time — a lot worse.”

If he had been sleeping an inch higher, or lower, a lot more than Holmes’ earlobe could have been detached.

“It went for my ear,” Holmes said. “What are the odds? I’m pretty lucky.”

Holmes wanted to get the most out of his trip, and he wasn’t going to let his detached lobe ruin the weekend.

He told Hurst to grab the fishing poles from camp before they left for the hospital, just in case.

“When we were done, I thought we could go fishing,” Holmes said.

They were able to fish after they returned to camp.

“We showed up awhile before the game warden was there and set traps,” Holmes said, whose campsite was right next to a creek.

He and Hurst have already planned another trip to Montana in mid-July.

This time, it’s a backpacking trip to go fly fishing up in the mountains.