MAN MAULED BY BEAR, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING ... TWICE!

  • Published
  • By a compilation by Tim Barela
  • Torch Magazine
SULPHUR, La. --  Jerry LeDoux isn't sure whether he's the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest. On the one hand, he's been mauled by a bear and struck by lightning on two separate occasions, which makes him feel a bit cursed. On the other hand, not many people incur Mother Nature's wrath to such a violent degree and live to tell about it.

LeDoux, a 67-year-old former Navy Seal who received the Purple Heart for the three bullets he took in Vietnam, prefers to think of himself as lucky. The master mechanic from Sulphur, La., realizes all too well the odds of all of these calamities happening to one man is bordering on the infinitesimal. It's like a dark cloud hovers over him.

LeDoux, however, figures he's fortunate to have survived it all.

"Funny things happen, and it gets rough," he said in an interview with "Book of Odds" writer Zachary Turpin. "But I'm still waking up every morning, going about my business."

A black bear attacked LeDoux in 1990 when he and his wife stopped at a roadside park in Arkansas. They spotted what they thought were baby bears digging in trash cans. LeDoux exited his vehicle to take some photos. Then he started feeding the bears.

But he got too close.

One of the bears stood up, and "I realized this is no baby," he told Turpin. "It bit me up pretty good."

Then in August of 1999, LeDoux was working outside during a storm and was struck by lightning. He told "Book of Odds" that it ruptured some discs in his neck and back, burned a stainless steel necklace into his chest and inflicted some brain damage that causes him memory loss and bouts of depression to this day.

"It did a little number on me," he said.

During the second lightning strike, in August 2005, LeDoux was driving a Ford Focus when lightning struck and knocked him out.

"When I came to, I was parked sideways on the road," he told Turpin. "I'd always heard you were safe from lightning in your car."

After the second strike, some people started calling him "Lightning Rod" and "Sparky." LeDoux takes it all in stride; and even though he's had some bad luck, he doesn't believe "the gods are out to get him." Especially since the bear mauling could have been avoided if he'd just stayed in his vehicle, and one of the lightning strikes could have been prevented if he'd gone indoors during the violent thunderstorm.

Nevertheless, it's enough to make even the biggest skeptic consider surrounding himself with rabbits' feet and four leaf clovers.