Bear vs. Combine - Analysis
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THE PHOTOS you have just seen are authentic, snapped by Nancy DeRosier of Osceola, Wisconsin on October 26, 2006. Her husband, Troy DeRosier, was harvesting corn that day when one of the wheels of the combine he was driving got stuck in a hole that looked to be the opening of a badger's den.
It wasn't. Trapped inside the hole was a wounded, 300-pound black bear who very much wanted to be elsewhere. After some deliberation and a phone consultation with the state Department of Natural Resources, during which some 20 witnesses gathered on the scene, the bear was shot dead. The rest is folklore.How did Troy DeRosier's Wisconsin cornfield suddenly end up in the state of Illinois? The fabricating began soon after Nancy DeRosier emailed the photos to family and friends, who in turn passed them along to their families and friends, who likewise passed them along, and so on. By the third round of forwards (if not before), many of the folks receiving the photos hadn't the foggiest idea whose cornfield they were looking at or where it was located. Naturally, they made something up.
Filling in the blanks
For some insight into this process we can look to one of the longer versions of the story (Variant #4), which is basically a conglomeration of earlier, shorter versions of the story written by different people. The first full paragraph begins:
| This is pretty interesting. A co-worker of mine is from the Decatur area and someone who knows this farmer sent it to her. Pretty crazy to think there was a bear that size here in Illinois. |
Note the author's claim that he/she received the message from a co-worker in Decatur, who received it from someone else "who knows this farmer," leading to the assumption that the farmer also resides in Illinois. A few paragraphs down we find a different author venturing the same guess:
| Got this from my friend Tim, a fellow FB Manager. Am assuming this happened either in the Decatur area or in Taylorville area where he's originally from. |
Reasonable enough, if one supposes that the person who sent the message is the same one who wrote the subsequent paragraph:
| My neighbor last Friday got this bear with the combine a half mile north of me. The combine was stuck, and the den hole was 5 feet deep. The bear was trying to dig out from under the wheel but could not get out, the DNR told them to shoot it. It dressed out 287 pounds, and was a male. |
But as we now know, if the author of that paragraph is indeed a neighbor of Troy DeRozier's, he lives in Wisconsin, not Illinois.
The message closes with a snippet that appears to have been the core of the original message, presumably written by Nancy DeRozier herself:
| Troy got a bear with the combine. He was combining our corn over at Measners field and fell into a big hole. He thought it was a badger hole until a big black paw came out. Pretty soon a head appeared. They knew for sure it was no badger. He wasn't very happy either. He was 300 pounds. |
Which is just enough backstory to complement the pictures, which largely speak for themselves. Note that Troy DeRozier is referred to by his first name only. Apart from the name of the field where he was harvesting, no location is given — nor would it have seemed necessary in a message meant only for close family and friends.
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Sources and further reading:
Bear Stuck Under Combine - The Truth
Bear Hunting Magazine, 10 November 2006Illinois Has Nothing to Do with E-Bear
Chicago Sun-Times, 30 November 2006State Says Black Bear Email is Hoax
Associated Press, 30 November 2006Bear Found Hibernating in a Cornfield?
Pioneer Press, 14 December 2006
Last updated: 09/15/20
