Man Vs. Wild“The Deep South”
Original Air Date: August 27, 2008
Jeff P. – Two Cents Staff Writer
jeffp@thetwocentscorp.com
Bear Grylls is back in the Bayou again… this time in Louisiana. I’m feeling soggy already.
Bear gets dropped off from a seaplane into a river deep in a Louisiana swamp. Just like his adventure in Florida, he gets a stick to help him trudge through the swamp. He finds a water snake, and eats him raw. He first has to squeeze out rotted fish from it’s stomach. (Uh, yuck?).
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Man Vs. Wild
ReplyDelete“The Deep South”
Original Air Date: August 27, 2008
Jeff P. – Two Cents Staff Writer
jeffp@thetwocentscorp.com
Bear Grylls is back in the Bayou again… this time in Louisiana. I’m feeling soggy already.
Bear gets dropped off from a seaplane into a river deep in a Louisiana swamp. Just like his adventure in Florida, he gets a stick to help him trudge through the swamp. He finds a water snake, and eats him raw. He first has to squeeze out rotted fish from it’s stomach. (Uh, yuck?) Then he holds a small alligator at bay with his stick, proving how important it is to carry it in this environment. He runs into another gator, this time a six-footer! He kills it for food and it’s hide. He uses the hide to tie together some palmetto leaves to make a shelter. He builds a fire and cooks his dinner for the night. He also shares with us the trick of rubbing alligator fat on you to repel mosquitoes. I’d almost rather have the bite, myself.
Bear doesn’t get much sleep, but knows he has to move on. He finds an old logging cabin, but the first thing he finds in it is a deadly Cottonmouth snake. After the snake slithers away, Bear starts to build a raft from some wood he got from the cabin. He wants to use it to get across a large river, where he knows that larger alligators are found. A storm rolls in and forces him to wait to be able to cross. After it passes, he makes it across safely.
In a scary moment, Bear decides to use his hand for bait to try to catch a Catfish. He warns us that this is dangerous; since you could also run into a snapping turtle which could eat your hand clean off. He finds a catfish, and dispatches it. Bear shows us his wounded hand, which doesn’t look pretty. But he’s thrilled to have a good meal from it! It turns out one of his stingers must have got him. Bear’s solution is to use ammonia to counteract its effect. Where do you get ammonia in the middle of a swamp? In your PEE, of course! He pees on his hand and moves on. (Sidebar: I hope the cameraman refused any handshakes behind the scenes.)
Later, Bear is trudging through some floating weeds and drops right through into a hole. He has to swim underwater to come up to another area. That was relatively scary. After some more travel, he finds a large fishing boat in the middle of nowhere. It’s a really weird site to see. Hurricane Katrina must have moved it here. Bear climbs to the top of the boat to get a lay of the land. He finds an open path made by Katrina that is easier to travel. He takes that for a while and sees an abandoned house past a river. He goes to check it out. Other than another Cottonmouth, he finds nothing else interesting. But he decides to climb up to the roof as a high ground to be found by his rescue copter. The copter arrives, and Bear is on his way home again.
One of my all time favorite episodes was the Florida Everglades from the first season. I enjoy seeing Bear making his way through swampland and jungle terrains. As he gets around the world, you see how different, but also how similar certain environments are. What is your favorite terrain that Bear peruses through? Your two cents is always taken here.
Do you know which knife he use in this episode?
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