shopping. because you have mall sales up. those were up in july. here s the reason. the clearance sales going on on the spring merchandise, the summer merchandise, very good deals. consumers still do love a bargain, despite the fact that sentiment is down. it s at the lowest level it s been in something like over two years, at least it was in july. we did go to the malls in part because of deals and because july was a very, very hot month. one of the hottest julys we ve seen any 50 years. didn t go to the beach. didn t stay in our apartments. didn we went to a mall and shopped. we talk about back to school sales. what s the outlook for that? i think sales will probably come in flat at best. consumers are up against a number of headwinds. the anxiety level has increased. consumers were feeling optimistic at the beginning of the year and spending more freely. now i think we ll go back into retreat mode a little bit. a little more cautious given all
o-t-t-e-r. please hurry. i can t keep him off. reporter: hitzig says animals are not normally this aggressive. despite suffering from six rabies shots, will gibbons vows no vengeance against his attacker. i don t think i ll ever see it again. but if i do, i guess i ll call animal control. reporter: which is also the advice of the experts. matt gutman, abc news, miami. the holiday shopping season appears to be off to an encouraging start with americans spending an estimated $45 billion since thursday. 212 million shoppers visited stores over the black friday weekend. that s up nearly 9% from the 195 million who shopped this time last year. on black friday itself, mall sales were up a slight .3%. today, of course, is cyber monday. online sales are expected to attract a record 107 million shoppers. consumer reports predicts 17% of all americans are ready to