It is so uncommon to have a bear found dead in the woods that I have never heard of it happening.

Not ever.

Not even since this story.

As the mystery became more and more uncovered, it became more and more interesting and ultimately pretty tragic.

Putting our hands deep into the cavity of the animal where it was still warm, pulling out things like a heart.

And as sick and gross as it sounds, it was awesome. I'm Dr. Raywin Grant, and this is a different

kind of nature show, a podcast all about the human drama of saving animals. I want to tell you

my story and what it's actually like to track bears

in the sierras, chase lemurs and Madagascar, live with lions in Tanzania, and do all of that

as a black female scientist. This is going wild.

The first time I trapped a bear it, that was in the summer of 2011. And honestly, it was just a couple of days after I had arrived in Nevada. So I was super, super, super new to everything.

So how did I learn how to do it?

That was from my very hands-on training with John. He is someone who basically could not be more different from me. He, at the time, he was a middle-aged white man from this small town in Nevada.

If you say his name to other folks in the bear biology community, they know him for sure and respect him very, very much.

We're probably the first, if not the only ever in the history of the world, middle-aged white guy,

mid-20s, urban black woman, bear biology duo.

John taught me how to do everything bare. He taught me how to identify bear habitat by looking for

bear footprints or scat or claw markings. He taught me how to identify bear habitat by looking for bear footprints or scat or claw markings.

He taught me how to set traps for bears so that we can tranquilize them, take the data we need,

and then re-release them back into the forest.

And probably most importantly, he taught me how to attach a GPS collar to a bear so I could track their

movements and ultimately work to save them. I ended up working with John every summer from

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