More often than not, when people encounter wild predatory animals, they either ignore them, or attack, injure, or even kill.
It happened that wolves or monkeys took small children into their flock, mistaking them for their cubs, but here we will talk about such animals as lions and bears, which, as a rule, were not noticed in kindness to human children of any age.
Lions and a girl from Ethiopia
In early June 2005, in Ethiopia, Africa, a 12-year-old girl living in a rural area disappeared on her way home from school. Her family and other locals checked the entire area but found no trace. There were also no ransom demands and no one saw the girl with suspicious people.
People began to assume that she was taken away by wild animals or taken to a big city, but soon something much more strange happened. On June 9 of the same year, the missing girl was found alive, but in the desert 350 miles from the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. And surrounded by three lions (!).
The girl looked scared and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. As it turned out, the girl was attacked by several men who took her to the desert and there they began to beat her and force her to marry one of them.
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The girl refused and suffered beatings, until suddenly three lions appeared out of nowhere. The lions did not touch the child at all and at the same time remained next to the girl for many hours, until the police arrived here. Only then did the lions get up and leave.
According to wildlife experts, it is possible that the girl was crying, and her cry was like the meow of lion cubs and therefore the lions came here and their offspring protection mechanism was activated. According to another version, the lions were actually just not hungry and they would sit next to the girl until they were hungry, and then they would eat her.
Mister Wolf
A much older case, but also related to the missing girl, was described in the book "The Missing 411" by author David Polides. This happened in 1868 in the north of Michigan (USA). A 3-year-old girl suddenly disappeared, whom her father took with him to the forest when he was collecting firewood for the winter.
Having lost his daughter, the father began to look for her, taking two neighbors as helpers. They searched for the child all day, all night and the next morning, but they never found it. However, the father continued to convince them that they must look further. And on the second day, when people were walking through a completely dense part of the forest, one of them suddenly heard a thin cry of a child in the distance.
The girl's father and the hunters ran to scream and soon came out to a small stream, near which they noticed something very large and black. It looked like a bear, but people did not have time to see it better, the animal jumped into the stream with a splash and disappeared from sight.
And when they got away from the shock, they saw a lost girl next to the stream. She was alive and well, only without shoes and without a hat.
When the girl was warmed and fed at home, she began to tell an unusual story about a certain "Mister Wolf". According to her, this "mister" took her prisoner and kept her in his house, and then ate her hat and took her shoes. When the girl tried to get away from him, "Mr. Wolf" pulled her back. Once he brought the girl a handful of "berries" and left it on her lap.
The girl's father did not understand who this "Mr. Wolf" was. The fact that it was not a wolf could be understood by the fact that it brought berries to the child, but was it a bear? Or maybe it was Bigfoot? Alas, the girl did not give any more details.
Black man
This story about a strange "black man" from the forest who met a lost child, took place somewhere in the United States in an unnamed place. On August 25, 1898, 3-year-old Alice Rachel Peck tied into the woods after her mother, who went to get berries. The mother sent the child home, but on the way back the girl got lost and did not reach the house.
Over the next three days, all the locals were looking for the child, but they could not find a trace. But on August 28, the girl was found completely unharmed, 5 miles from the house. True, she was in some unusual state, like a trance.
When the child was stirred and warmed, the girl told how long she had been walking barefoot through the forest. On the day of the loss, the girl was wearing shoes and a hood on her head, but they found her really barefoot and without a hood. There were several berries in the pockets of my clothes.
As the girl was found behind a row of large stones, she was asked how she got over them and the girl suddenly said that a “black man” helped her. Then she said that this "black man" continued to lead her through the forest and through the fallen trees and stones. According to one version, the girl was dragged by a bear; according to a more modern hypothesis, she met a local Bigfoot (aka Yeti).
Case in Montana
In July 1955, 2-year-old Ida Mae Curtis went missing at a logging camp at Kootenai National Forrest in Montana. According to the girl's mother, the child was attacked by a bear and dragged her into the thicket of the forest. However, he dragged her not with his teeth, but in his paws, and rocked her like his cub.
For two days, about 350 local residents were looking for the child in the forest and found just 300 meters from the place where the bear dragged her away. The girl was sitting in a shallow damp hole under the roots of a tree. Then she said as best she could that "the bear fed her and hugged her to keep her warm."
The state authorities were critical of this and called it a fairy tale, but the girl's family was sure that the child was telling the truth.
Boy and bear
The most recent case of this kind, you probably remember yourself, happened in early 2019 in North Carolina. Casey Hathaway, a 3-year-old boy, left his yard in the woods and disappeared. The weather was cool, and then a cold rain with wind poured down.
They searched for the boy with dogs for two days and over a hundred volunteers, but they did not find him. And only at the end of the second day, a local resident went for a walk with her dog in the forest and heard the cry of a child, heard from the thorny bushes. In the bushes sat Casey, wet, cold, but alive and not even very frozen.
And when the child was taken to the hospital, he began to tell that all these two days he had been walking in the woods with his "friend bear". The boy's aunt believes that it was God who sent the animal to protect her nephew.
Chris Serkhin from Montana State University knows a lot about bear habits and assures that this is completely different from them.
However, another expert is confident that wild bears can also wake up maternal instinct at the sight of a small person. The boy's mother fully believes her son: "If he said that he was walking with a bear, then everything was exactly like that."
