Five weeks after a grizzly bear bit off his lower jaw, a Montana man may soon return home.
Rudy Noorlander, who now communicates with others by writing words on a white board, says he's looking forward to having a root beer float once he's released from the hospital.
"That the first root beer float is going to taste so amazing," he said in a statement read by his daughter, Katelynn Noorlander Davis, at a news conference last week. "Soon I'm going to be a free-range chicken and won't be hooked up to anything."
Noorlander was attacked about 55 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, where he owns a rental business in Big Sky. It happened on Sept. 8, when he was helping two people look for a deer they had shot and wounded, according to the Associated Press.
As for what happened during the attack, Noorlander hasn't revealed the details because he wants to "tell the story himself and write a book," the AP reported.
Either way, he survived.
After the attack, surgeons reconstructed his jaw and lower lip in a grueling 10-hour operation, using bone from his lower leg.
"He's developed a whole new hatred toward the University of Montana," Davis joked, referring to the team's mascot, a grizzly.
While the bear may have gotten his jaw, Noorlander still has his sense of humor, adding that he "will win round 2" with the beast.
"Only by the hands of God am I here," Noorlander said in a statement. "Believe it or not, I believe that this attack was an answer to my prayers and that potentially it could help somebody else going through something similar."