Hercules the Bear - A Gentle Giant in the Family

Book excerpt: When Scottish Ladies Show-Jumping Champion Maggie Nimmo married British Commonwealth Wrestling Champion Andy Robin, she knew that her family would be unusual, for with Andy came a nine-month old grizzly bear . . .Hercules the Bear is a moving story in which love and faith overcome the impossible. Maggie Robin, Hercules’s adopted mother, started writing this account of her family whilst in the depths of despair, during those long hours when her ‘son’ Herc was lost, apparently gone for ever, in the wild and unforgiving terrain of the island of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides.This new and completely revised edition brings the story up to date, telling of the bear’s many appearances in advertisements, films and on television until, once again, disaster struck, when he was nearly crippled by damage to his spine. Maggie’s account relates how she and Andy slowly nursed Hercules back to health, partly through swimming exercises until, in the fullness of time he died at the age of twenty-five. His death left the Robins bereft, but in time they came to realise just how much Hercules had taught them and others, and the debt they owed him.Told in Maggie’s own words, this is the extraordinary story of how she and Andy achieved what everyone said was impossible: the domestication of ‘the fiercest animal in the New World’. The experts said it was impossible: no man will train a grizzly bear - no man will wrestle a grizzly bare-handed.Yet Maggie, Andy and Herc proved the experts wrong, and in doing so have become folk heroes in their own time.Here is their story.