It seems to happen a lot up here in Alaska. For years, people have come up here because we have a large portion of the state designated as wilderness and that area, along with a lot of rural and metropolitan areas, have a large population of wild critters, most notably bears and moose.
And, we have a large number of folks who come up here thinking they can out-think the wild critters who were born and raised out in those wild places.
Several years ago, some gal came up here from Australia and thought the THREE fences between her and Binky the polar bear at the Anchorage zoo were not really necessary, so she went right down to the bars and in an instant, Binky had a hold of her left thigh and wouldn't let go. Finally, he let her go, but he kept her shoe and played with it a lot before his death from some kind of virus.
Then we had "Tasty" Timmy Treadwell. He was an ex-addict who thought it would be cool to come up here and live out in the bush with the bears. He managed quite a few summers and went back to California each winter and regaled his friends with how he was doing. He even named the bears and he thought everything was peachy keen with them. He also brought his girlfriend Amy Heugendahl up here so she could experience the great bear adventure with him. They did. One night, a rogue bear came in and killed them, and another bear saw it was fun to eat the tender pink flesh with no claws or teeth to worry about. Both of those bears were killed by troopers who were just trying to recover the remains of the two. They put the remains of each one into a small plastic tub. Mostly just ribs and torso parts by that time.
Now we have another casualty of idiocy. His name was Richard White, he was 49 years old and was from San Diego, Cal. He came up here thinking he could go see the bears and not have a problem. He attended the MANDATORY bear safety class before he stepped out into the wilderness of Denali National Park and he came across a big Brown/Grizzly bear. He stayed within fifty feet of the big bear taking pictures on his digital camera. He was warned to stay away from bears if he came across one. Well, he decided that he wasn't doing anything wrong and the bear decided after eating berries and salmon all summer, he would see how a people tasted.
That bear had to be killed and after his stomach was cut open, they found bits of flesh and fabrics from Richards clothing in there. Poor bear.
We who LIVE up here LIKE our bears. We who LIVE up here RESPECT our bears. If you want to come up here and disregard the caution we provide, if you come up here and think Winnie the Pooh is just a big fluffy, cuddly snugglie to play with, do NOT be surprised if it bites your ass.
Do not be offended if I write one of these about YOU if you come up here and think you know better than those of us who deal with this stuff every day. California is known as "The Golden Bear State". There aren't any more "Golden Bears" living there any more. That's why they have Winnie the Pooh in California.