A woman jogger descending on a trail in British Columbia suddenly froze when a black bear emerged from the bushes in front of her.
Sam Abdullah, who was ascending the popular Coquitlam Crunch trail below her, started videotaping when he saw what was happening. The Sun posted the video on YouTube.
“I think she was in shock and she just froze there,” Abdullah told CBC News of the encounter last weekend.
“If you see the video, we are doing the opposite [of what] we are supposed to do. We are coming closer to the bear. I was trying to distract the bear by yelling because we are not running away, because there was a girl there and we waited there until we knew that she was safe.”
The black bear casually walked up to the stunned runner and tapped her on the knee and then stood back.
The bear approached her again, but she managed to slip by the bear and started running down the trail. Fortunately, the bear did not give chase.
The woman ran past Abdullah. He attempted to catch up with her to see if she was OK, Abdullah said, but “she kept on running all the way down.”
Conservation officer Murray Smith told CBC News that he couldn’t blame the woman reacting as she did but advises people who encounter a bear to back away slowly, make yourself big by putting your arms over your head and talk to the animal, telling it calmly that you’re a human.
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“Once you back away and get out of the situation, then you can hurry away a little quicker,” he said.
Smith also said it worries him that the bear actually touched the jogger.
“It appears the bear had little or no fear of the runner,” he told CBC News. “It wasn’t like the bear was startled by the runner and reached out and contacted them. In this case, the runner stopped, and the bear approached the runner and then the bear hit the person’s leg, so it’s very concerning.”
Wildlife officials were going to attempt to trap the bear, and it’s possible it would be euthanized if caught, but they are seeking more information first.
Photo courtesy of Sam Abdullah.