Bear Safety

With both bears in our yard and around our building at work, I thought it might be wise to read a refresher on bear safety.  That means human safety around bears, not the safety of bears.  Not that I'm against bears being safe themselves.  I'm totally down with that.

There are many good tips from the National Park Service including what to do when confronted by a bear to avoid an attack and how to read the cues the bear is signaling.  You also want to treat an attack by the brown/grizzly bears in the West much differently than the attacks of the more-widely-ranging black bears.  We have black bears in Massachusetts.

For black bears, do not play dead.  Here is the full paragraph:

If you are attacked by a black bear, DO NOT PLAY DEAD. Try to escape to a secure place such as a car or building. If escape is not possible, try to fight back using any object available. Concentrate your kicks and blows on the bear's face and muzzle.

I'd read up on avoiding an attack, however.  That seems much more reasonable than relying on my fists to make any impact on the skull of a bear.  Just saying.

In this dude's defense, he didn't drop or even spill his drink!

15 May 2015