For Richard Selfee and his wife Cheryl, an Alaskan cruise was the trip of a lifetime. Both had retired two years prior in Suburb, Ohio and Mrs. Selfee convinced her husband that Carnivore Cruise Lines’ Sunny Delite was the way to see the wild stormy North. 

“It took Richard a little while to get used to the idea,” Mrs. Selfie said, “but then he got really interested in bears. Started reading all about them and watching documentaries like Grizzly Man.”

The Sunny Delite stopped in Ketchikan and Juneau, where they went on some whale-watching and fishing tours. But no bears. “We saw a couple whales, yeah,” Richard Selfee said. But then I heard about Chilkoot River where the bears are just out in the open, fishing. So we went. I just really really want to see one bear eat my face.”

“Just one giant chomp, y’know? To be devoured by an apex predator would really just bring me back to my roots. I’d feel like a Neanderthal again.”

“Richard wanted one to eat his face,” Mrs. Selfee said, “Just one. I asked the guide what time the bears ate people but she just looked a little confused.”

Mr. Selfee clarified that, “The whales and moose and scenery were great, don’t get me wrong, but if the last sight my eyes were to behold was the salivating interior of a brown bear’s jaws—then I could just die happy.” 

He had tried numerous tactics to make himself more edible, including swimming upriver alongside the salmon, placing himself between a mother bear and her cubs, and loitering inside open garbage cans. With the ship’s all-aboard at seven, Selfee thought he might try constructing a sort of ‘meat suit’—“kinda like Lady Gaga,”—but decided against it when he saw the price of meat at the grocery store.