September 23, 2011 in Outdoors, City

Young wrangler, maybe even horse, booked for Letterman

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Courtesy photo photo

Erin Bolster, wrangler, and her horse, Tonk, fended off a grizzly bear chasing a horse carrying a young boy on a trail ride near Glacier National Park on July 30, 2011.
(Full-size photo)

My Outdoors feature story last Sunday, “Gutsy wrangler, huge horse, save boy from charging grizzly” struck a chord with Spokesman-Review readers –and then spread to readers across the continent like jet-propelled stallions.

The story of Erin Bolster and her horse, Tonk, riding herd on a grizzly bear near Glacier National Park went viral on the Internet, capturing the hearts of a country with an appetite for heroes, horses and potential tragedies with happy endings – for both the people and the bear.

On the average, 35,000 people a day were viewing the story on The Spokesman-Review site alone, a number that jumped to 97,000 a day on Wednesday when Google added the link to it’s News Spotlight list. Now it’s all over and it’s in the millions.

“It’s been crazy,” said Bolster from her home in Whitefish, Mont., noting that she’s been interviewed by numerous publications, TV and radio since the S-R story went wild.

On Friday, she tentatively was booked for Oct. 4 or 5 on the David Letterman show.

Read the rest of Rich Landers’ blog post here.

Three comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  hdw on September 23 at 2:11 p.m.

  You Go girl! But leave the horse at home. Traveling long distance like that, especially on airplanes can be dangerous for horses that are not used to it, and tranqualizing is never good unless absolutely needed. It’s not worth the risk for what will probably only be about 10 minutes of air time.

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  Squid on September 23 at 4:03 p.m.

  Ace does a flying horsey good.

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  Albert on September 23 at 5:11 p.m.

  Outstanding!