JOEL ROSENTHAL: Nothing in this world—not
sex, not food—can top just casually going for an hour hike with a bear.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Nobody else in the world can
do this. Nobody else in the world does this.
COMM: At Point Of View farm in West Virginia,
74-year-old Joel Rosenthal lives with five black bears.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Look at you Boo.
COMM: He’s been rescuing wild bears for
the past seven years, raising them inside his house and keeping them safe from hunters.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I take naps with them, we
play in the house, they get fed in the house, and then as they grow, they are moved to larger
facilities outside. It is really special to be able to hike around with two or three bear
cubs that are just following me. I really have to pinch myself all the time, because
I can’t believe that I am really really doing this, that I have this relationship
with these animals.
COMM: Once the hunting season has passed and
the bears are old enough, Joel releases them back into the wild.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: They don’t go off and become
a nuisance, they don’t break into people’s homes, they don’t attack people, they just
go off and become wild bears, which is exactly what they are genetically programmed to do.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I have had 20 bears altogether.
My guess is that almost all of them have been killed by hunters.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I try to separate my emotions
from it. I have to divorce from my brain any accumulation of grief knowing that, again,
most if not all the bears that I have released are dead.
COMM: People often contact Joel when they
find bears injured or abandoned in the hope that he will take them in and the first bear
came into his care in 2009.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Rose is almost 7 years old.
She was raised in the house and a couple of years ago she had a cub right here and I played
with the cub every day until she went off with the cub into the forest. She is probably
about 300 pounds.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: But I got to lock her up,
keep her from being shot. Well, she and I have a special relationship, if I were to
let her out right now, she wouldn’t bother anybody, but once she is off in the woods,
she is just a wild bear. So this is Waffles, Waffles is almost two years old. He is probably
close to 200 pounds and he is such a sweetie. Waffles is locked up because instead of going
off and being a real bear for the summer, he decided that he wanted to be in the house
all the time.
COMM: Joel lives deep in the forests, on the
deserted side of a large river. This means he can go months on end without seeing
another human being.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: So this is all part of Point
Of View farm—non-profit charitable organisation, a wildlife sanctuary, 262 acres and I am the
only one living on this side of the river for miles. I live all alone. I live miles
from the nearest human being. I sometimes go a month or more, two months without ever
seeing another human being and I’m a happy camper.
COMM: Joel predominantly feeds his bears with
meat but sometimes treats them to something a little bit different.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Waffles likes peanut butter,
but Rose does not. So she doesn’t get any peanut butter. I give those three bears some
of this meat, but actually I have been cutting back a little bit because the temperature
is getting cold. I feed them several times a day. I want them to get used to me. I want
them to become bound to me so that we have this special relationship, which makes the
entire process of raising them and eventually releasing them a lot easier. I prefer any
animal to humans.
COMM: While Joel has never been attacked by
one of his bears, he realises the threat they pose due to their sheer size.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I consider bears to be very,
very safe. All the statistics bare that out, regardless of anything I am prejudiced about.
Bears are wonderful animals. I have never been attacked by a bear. We are talking about
a 200 or 300 pounds animal who is stronger than 10 human beings and quicker than a rattlesnake,
and yet here I am as the doting mother trying to discipline a huge linebacker, there is
a likelihood at the very least that I am gonna get scratched or injured a little bit, but
it is not out of malice, it’s not an attack.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I’m respectful because they
are wild animals despite the fact that I have raised them.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Come on Sarah. Come on Coda. Come here.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I get a lot of attention on
my Facebook page. Joel Rosenthal, I put up lots of pictures of the animals, videos of
the animals. There are people from all over the world who now follow the exploits that
happen here at Point of View Farm.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: There is my boy.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: There is no doubt about it
that my raising, caring for, interacting with and releasing bears into the environment has
been very, very special.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: I am 74 years old now. This
is the culmination of my lifelong dream, to have a place like this and it’s all happening.
Here they come again. Come on Boo.
JOEL ROSENTHAL: Look at you guys. Look at all three of you.