This encounter with a black bear and her cubs could have ended badly. Really badly.
NPR:
A 17-year-old Southern California girl got in a shoving match with a bear to protect her dogs and walked away nearly unscathed.
Hailey Morinico and her mother were gardening in their backyard in Bradbury, Calif., on Monday afternoon when a bear and her cubs began walking atop a cinder block wall at one end of the garden.
Video of the terrifying encounter shows that the appearance of the family of California black bears on the short wall set off one of Morinico’s dogs, which began barking and lunging at them. Mama bear, in turn, started swatting at the large dog and three small ones that had joined the canine vs. ursine confrontation.
The commotion caught Morinico’s attention, and without thinking, she told KTLA news, she ran over to defend the family pets.
“I run to see what they’re barking at, and it’s not a dog — it’s a bear,” she said.
“I see the bear, it’s grabbing my dog, Valentina, and I have to run over there. She’s a baby,” Morinico said. “And the first thing I think to do is push the bear. And somehow it worked.”
Morinico threw her hands up in the air and pushed the large bear off the wall. (The cubs, frightened by the loud barking, had already high-tailed it away from the scene.) Morinico then scooped up one of the smaller dogs, and she and the pets all ran in the opposite direction.Article continues after sponsor message
The teen said she is lucky to have walked away with only a sprained finger and a scraped knee.
Her advice: Do not push bears. “Don’t do what I did — you might not have the same outcome.”
NBC Los Angeles reports:
Human-bear encounters are rare in California, but bears often visit foothill communities and other areas that abut wilderness in search of food — especially on trash day. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a list of tips and general guidelines to follow regarding bear encounters.
Wild animal encounters are not rare here in the N.C. mountains. A week ago, a neighbor shooed a black bear off her front porch. A few days later, she was taking a photo of a loud tom turkey in her driveway.
Speaking of turkeys:
Just yesterday, we had to corral and evict a 4-ft black snake from my MIL’s basement.
A mother bear and several cubs (below) regularly pass through her property in late afternoon. There are dens on the mountainside above and below her house just half a mile uphill from the neighborhood wine store and gourmet ice cream shop. One standing between some shrubs huffed at me from 8 feet away last summer when I surprised it just around the corner from the golf course. Another gave birth to cubs under a woman’s deck just over a mile from here.
Someone in the neighborhood shot this video from his deck last October.
Neighborhood dogs barking work like bear detectors. Protocol is to look first when you step out the door after about 5 p.m. Avoid approaching cubs. And DO NOT put trash out until the morning of trash day.
The city has been here since about 1800, but as it has spread out, bears have grown way to accustomed to people.