- Rudy Noorlander lost part of his jaw during a bear attack in September.
- He will soon be out of the hospital, and spent time at a news conference joking about the experience.
A man who survived a grizzly bear attack that left him without a part of his jaw is preparing to be released from the hospital and has some fighting words for the bear.
"I will win round two," Rudy Noorlander, 61, wrote on a whiteboard at a press conference Friday.
A grizzly bear attacked Noorlander on September 8 while he was searching for a dead deer that a couple of hunters had lost in Custer Gallatin National Forest, his daughter KateLynn Noorlander-Davis said in a GoFundMe post.
A small grizzly bear appeared nearby, and Noorlander pulled out his gun to try to scare the bear. At the same time, a larger bear appeared. Noorlander-Davis wrote that her father's gun misfired and all he could do was "punch the bear in hopes of slowing it down."
"Unfortunately it did not, and after the first punch the Grizzly was on top of Rudy," Noorlander-Davis wrote. "The Grizzly left a large scratch down his right chest, bit his arms, legs, and to top it all off, gave him as what Rudy describes as the most disgusting French kiss of his life before biting down and tearing off his lower jaw."
Noorlander was rushed to the hospital and has since had three jaw surgeries to reconstruct his face. He is able to speak a little, but his daughter said it was painful for him to do so. Dr. Hilary McCrary, his surgeon said he would need speech therapy during the press conference.
Now, he is preparing to leave the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City — hopefully by Monday, his family said — and is looking forward to enjoying life back at home.
"I truly feel blessed to be surrounded by such amazing people," Noorlander-Davis said, reading her father's statement. "I also want to say that the first root beer float is going to taste so amazing and soon I'm going to be a free-range chicken and won't be hooked up to anything."