Hercules the Bear - A Gentle Giant in the Family
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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.
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This book is dedicated with affection and gratitude to the Islanders of Benbecula, and in memory of Mum and Dad; also in memory of our good friend Eddie Orbell, without whom this amazing adventure would not have been possible.
Firstly, David Summnall of Middlechild Productions, with whom we entrusted Hercules’s story – thank you David.
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One day after Andy had cut down a tree he noticed that a jackdaws’ nest was lodged in the fallen branches. There were two fledglings in the nest, who had obviously been abandoned by their mother when the tree was felled. Andy’s big soft heart couldn’t let him leave the two helpless birds and so ‘the Beast’ adopted them. He called the two birds Jackie and Mary and raised them in his house. When the birds were fully fledged he released them but they would always come to be fed, and it was not uncommon for Andy to be seen with a jackdaw perched on each shoulder. When he was working they would sit easily, relaxing on the head of his giant Alsatian, Rex. Sadly, one day as Andy was coming out of his timber store, the birds flew to meet him and, not knowing they were behind the door, Andy opened it and crushed poor Jackie. Mary was heartbroken and within a short time she pined to death.
Not content with running himself into the ground at work every day, Andy became involved in amateur boxing, but, when he saw the damage the sport inflicted on the faces of the young boxers, coupled with the fact that he was being continually reprimanded by referees for grappling with his opponents, he decided boxing was not for him, and he turned his attentions to wrestling instead.
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