Bear Grylls’ son survives being stranded in locked Wal-Mart overnight

Los Angeles, Calif. – Jesse Grylls, son of Bear Grylls, host of the Discovery Channel survival show Man vs. Wild, used survival techniques similar to those used by his father to endure a nightmare scenario Wednesday night, as the eight-year-old was locked overnight alone in a deserted Wal-Mart Superstore, sources said.

“What an ordeal this young man has been through: spending the entire night all alone, lost inside that monstrous store, relying on only his wits and limitless access to Wal-Mart’s entire inventory to survive until the store reopened,” said Dean Lawrence, a Wal-Mart spokesperson. “Just imagine, if this young man hadn’t had the survival instinct to navigate his way through Automotive and Housewares to get to the grocery section, he may well have been a very, very hungry boy come morning.”

According to reports, Grylls was accidentally left behind in the deep recesses of Wal-Mart’s vast toy section by his parents, Bear and Shara Grylls, who, distracted by ringing cell phones and hurried by the store’s impending closure, somehow miscommunicated with regard to which parent was to take their son home and put him to bed. Following frantic phone calls to the store from Shara Grylls the following morning, Wal-Mart management quickly mobilized all available employees to form a store-wide search and rescue effort.

“We only had about twenty minutes to locate the boy before the store opened for business, because as soon as customers would’ve started roaming the aisles it would have made finding him nearly impossible,” said store manager Deborah Stone. “Luckily, a member of the cleaning crew heard what he thought was a distress call emanating from Electronics, and it was there where we found Jesse: hunkered down in an impromptu pillow fort, drinking from a two-liter of orange soda, eating cheese curls and microwavable pizza, watching the third Pirates of the Caribbean DVD at top volume on all 15 of the display model televisions.”

Stone said that when rescuers reached Grylls shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday morning, the youth was conscious, responsive and in good spirits, but apparently delusional to the point of not wanting to leave his self-constructed fortress until the movie’s end. Rescuers observing the scene noted that Grylls had employed a number of resourceful survival tactics likely learned from his father in order to traverse the 10-hour ordeal.

“It appears that the child had managed to fashion a crude shelter simply by making his way over to the Sporting Goods section and procuring for himself a tent, sleeping bag and about a dozen pillows,” said Dale Evans, a member of the morning cleaning crew who aided in Grylls’ rescue. “When it came to scavenging for sustenance, Jesse cleverly loaded an entire shopping cart full of snack food and soda from the grocery aisles. He’s very lucky, though, that he didn’t develop frostbite in the frozen food aisles – an area of the store that can prove to be surprisingly hazardous even to experienced shoppers.”

Grylls’ superior knowledge of products indigenous to Wal-Mart’s grocery area also proved invaluable in the youngster finding and recognizing suitable sources of liquid nourishment.

“Based on a bottle’s shape and its label’s markings, colors and design, and considering in what area of the store the bottle is found, Jesse was able to discern which bottles contained liquid suitable for him to drink and which bottles could potentially contain alcohol,” said Stone, who spoke at length with Grylls and his parents upon their joyous reunion in the store’s bottle return area. “Jesse told me that his dad does the same thing in the wild with mushrooms and berries. Bear added that berries containing poisonous substances often taste bitter, and Jesse said that he found the same to be true with seemingly innocent looking liquids that turn out to actually be vodka or wine.”

Executives at the Discovery Channel refused to comment on quickly circulating rumors that the network has already approached the Grylls family about shooting a pilot based on Jesse’s experience for a possible series in which Jesse is locked overnight in less hospitable retail environments such as Toys ‘R’ Us or Old Navy.