Yusuf Alchagirov
"I got off easy. If I had chickened out and not fought, the animal would have immediately torn me apart and I would not be sitting with you."
Less than a week ago, 80-year-old Russian shepherd Yusuf Alchagirov was minding his own business, not pissing anyone off, just working his farm in the ultra-rural, super-hilly backwater province of Kabardino-Balkaria along the Russia-Georgia border. He's lived a quiet life with his wife, family, and fellow villagers, working these fields since the days of Joseph Stalin, going through the daily-grind of sheepherding and farming presumably without ever having to literally headbutt any predatory wildlife unconscious in a life-or-death struggle for his own survival.
But November 1, 2013 would be unlike any of the previous 29,200+ days of Yusuf Alchagirov's life.
Today he was going to find himself locked in hand-to-hand combat with a pissed-off 1,000-pound Grizzly Bear armed with razor-sharp six-inch claws the size of kitchen knives and teeth specifically designed for crunching bone and disemboweling the meaty parts of organic life forms.
You see, it was on this day that Yusuf, who didn't have access to badass ATVs and shit and was still manually running down his sheep down on foot Cliff Young style despite literally being older than the Luftwaffe, found himself trotting through an old raspberry field near his farm and directly into a crude trap laid for him by one of nature's most gigantic and cold-blooded killers.
I guess the story goes that Alchagirov's dumbass sheep ran off like a bunch of assholes and wandered into the fields, but right as our old man hero was about to round them up and send them back to their pens he looked behind a nearby raspberry tree and saw a gigantic-ass brown bear sitting there, crouched in attack position, just waiting for this geezer to show up, rub a bunch of delicious berries on his head to season himself up, and then leap directly into the bear's open jaws like a Salmon during spawning season.
GET IN MAH BELLAY
Now, it's important to mention that Russia is basically getting fucked up right now by some kind of crazy Bearmageddon. Apparently there's been a lot of flooding recently, meaning that a bunch of bear food has been destroyed in the northern parts of the country, and now brown bears are rampaging across the countryside devouring everything they can find. Their favorite food is Geologists, having eaten three of them in the last calendar year, but in addition to hating scientists they also like to break into homes and steal borscht from peasants because they are total dicks and have no respect for oppressive Capitalist concepts like private property or the freedom from not being eaten by bears while you're trying to take a piss in the wilderness.
Yusuf Alchagirov had already had enough of this bear bullshit. The 80 year-old man froze for a second, staring unblinkinglyto the predatory eyes of a voracious, man-eating, half-ton killing machine that was preparing to massacre and devour him in a flurry of spikes and gore. Only one thought passed through his mind:
I'm going to fuck this thing up and wear his balls as a hat.
The bear charged. Yusuf acted fast – he pulled off his jacket, threw it over the bear's head, and then fucking punched the bear in the fucking face as hard as he could. But the old "bag over the head punch in the face" thing just pissed the bear off more, and the thing threw the coat off its head and chomped down with its ridiculously-massive jaws, locking them onto Yusuf's arm, ripping into bone and flesh with its slathering fangs.
Yusuf Alchagirov did exactly what you or I would have done in that situation – he grabbed the fucking bear's lower jaw, wrenched it off his arm, and didn't let go.
Oh yeah, and by "what you and I would have done in that situation", I meant to say "the exact opposite of what you and I would have done in that situation."
Wrenching the bear's head with one arm, Alchagirov dug in his pocket for a knife, pulled it out, and prepared to face-shank the bear. The bear, prepared for such a move and extraordinarily livid that he was getting his ass kicked by an 80 year-old man, slapped that shit right out of the old shepard's hand, ripped its jaw free, and grabbed the shepherd up in a badass 1000-pound bear hug, lifting Yusuf three feet off the ground.
Yusuf Alchagirov, his feet dangling like that dude being choked out by Darth Vader at the beginning of the first Star Warsmovie,
He HEADBUTTED THE FUCKING BEAR IN THE FACE WITH HIS FOREHEAD.
Let's think about this for a moment. Bears have big teeth. Their mouths open wide enough to fit a man's head inside, and their jaws are powerful enough to decapitate you. But this guy smashed the bear so hard in the nose with his head that it not only stunned the bear, it made it drop him.
Then he kicked it in the balls. A lot.
I am not joking.
The two warriors went at it, octogenarian vs. bear, for a few more minutes.
Here's roughly how I picture the battle going down.
The bear, having enough of the headbutting dick-kicking action of Yusuf Alchagirov, suddenly remembered it was a FUCKING BEAR and decided to put an end to this epic battle once and for all.
It grabbed the 80 year-old man, lifted him once again, and threw him off a cliff. He plummeted dozens of feet, slammed into the rock below, and fell unconscious. The bear, still seething with fury, dusted himself off and casually walked away in search of other human life to snuff out with his teeth.
But Yusuf Alchagirov, bloodied from being punched, clawed, and bitten by a 1,000-pound Brown Bear and then thrown off a cliff, didn't die. He woke up seven hours later, picked himself up, and walked back home. On the way there he found a team of villagers that had been sent to find out why he'd missed dinner. He'd broken four ribs, had a couple bite wounds and bruises, but was otherwise OK. Yeah, he'd lost the fight by TKO, but it was like the Jamaican Bobsled Team of Kicking Bears in the Dick.
When he got home his loving wife made him three traditional pies as a "Congratulations for Not Dying" present.
He ate them all.
Three pies.
Because that's how he rolls.
