Boy safe after Utah forest ordeal

His family says Brennan 'hasn't changed one bit' after his ordeal

A missing 11-year-old US boy scout who heeded parental warnings and avoided "stranger" rescuers has been found alive and well in Utah.

Brennan Hawkins went missing on Friday while camping at a scout camp high in the mountains east of Salt Lake City.

Thousands of people had turned out to look for him, but the boy defied the norms for how lost children behave.

Most children tend to walk downhill, but Brennan kept climbing away from the search zone.

He says he does not remember much of his ordeal, but did show how he crouched on the ground and pulled his sweatshirt over his knees to keep warm while he was lost.

His biggest fear, he told me, was someone would steal him Brennan's mother, Jody

Brennan's mother, Jody Hawkins, suggested her son may have been avoiding searchers because of his father's advice.

"He had two thoughts going through his head all the time," she said. "Toby's always told him that 'if you get lost, stay on the trail.' So he stayed on the trail.

"We've also told him don't talk to strangers... When an ATV [all-terrain vehicle] or horse came by, he got off the trail. ... When they left, he got back on the trail."

"His biggest fear, he told me, was someone would steal him," she said.

Good spirits

Brennan's uncle, Bob Hawkins, said his nephew may have been afraid to contact the strangers because they were not using the password his family had adopted.

"His personality has not changed one tiny bit," said Jody Hawkins. "He was cracking jokes to us within 20 to 30 seconds when we saw him yesterday."

One of the first questions Brennan asked after he was rescued, his mother said, was if the Pokemon cards he had ordered on eBay had arrived.

"I tell you, that's what got him off that mountain," she said.

Dehydrated

The boy was eventually spotted by a local man, Forrest Nunley, who was searching on his own in an all-terrain vehicle.

"I turned a corner and there was a kid standing in the middle of the trail. He was all muddy and wet," Mr Nunley said.

Brennan's father Toby was one of many scouring the dense forest

"He was a little delirious. I sat him down and gave him a little food."

Brennan was about five miles (8km) from the search area when he ran into Mr Nunley.

"Typically children walk downhill, along the least path of resistance," said Sheriff Dave Edmunds, one of the organisers of the search.

However, once he was safe, Brennan's spirits began to lift. Sheriff Edmunds said that, having consumed all the water and cereal snack bars that the rescuers were carrying, he asked if he could play a computer game on one searcher's mobile phone.

Brennan was tired and dehydrated, but before he was taken to hospital by ambulance for a health check, he was reunited with his parents and four siblings.