A hungry brown bear, who broke into an Alaskan fishing lodge, was put down by a Public Safety Officer after attempts to scare him away from public areas failed. The frightening encounter was recounted to followers of the Highliner Lodge & Fishing Charters Facebook page:
Our kitchen staff and guests had a pretty good scare last night during dinner service when a brown bear walked straight into the back of the restaurant. One of the servers had just gone out back to grab a wine glass and came face to face with it! Kitchen staff rushed out of the room which is connected to the dining area where a couple dozen of our fishing guests and the Highliner Lodge owner Steve were eating dinner.
Initially, owner Steve Daniels thought that he was being pranked about a big bear in the kitchen, but the head chef assured him that it was no joke! Details of what ensued followed:
Steve spun around and charged into the kitchen, believing there wasn’t really a bear at all. Half the guests ran out the front door; the other followed Steve into the kitchen! Unarmed and confronting a 400 pound bear who was sniffing around at the supplies and helping itself to food; Steve began yelling at the bear and picked up the first object he could find (a large round of salami!), paused for a second, realizing that throwing a hunk of meat at the bear may not be the best move, and instead elected to fling dinner plates at the bear in an effort to get it out the door. After smashing 4 or 5 plates and a lot of noise, the bear retreated and Steve slammed the door shut on the bears backside. Dinner service continued and everyone had a good laugh.
The bear had been spotted lurking around the dump, as well as on various residents’ properties and efforts to scare him away failed. Because of his lack of fear, the decision was made to put the bear down. The Facebook post explains the decision:
Judging this to be a serious threat to the community and with no other option the decision was made Officer Bob Adams to put the bear down. Bob was able to get a clean shot slightly before 10:00 pm and brought the bear down on the hillside 8 feet from the Highliner Lodge.
This was not the outcome that anyone had hoped for. Even on a remote island with the highest population of brown bear per square mile anywhere on Earth, such occurrences are very rare. Bears that exhibit such behavior are extremely dangerous to humans. While we would much prefer that this story could have ended with the comical intrusion of a bear on our dinner service, scaring it back into the hills forever by use of dinner plates and salami, we are relieved that everyone is safe and understand that the decision was unavoidable.
(Image via Facebook)
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YES, BUT MANY “OTHER” DECISIONS WERE “AVOIDABLE”!