Caught on Camera: Bear and Man Scare Each Other on Driveway
A Ring doorbell camera captured the moment a man got the shock of his life when a bear crept up on him as he was relaxing in a sun lounger.
David Oppenheimer was the embodiment of chill when a black bear walked onto his property. He jumped as soon as he noticed the bear in his periphery vision, turning to make eye contact with the bear who ran away moments later.
“Chillaxing at the end of the day didn’t expect to make eye contact so close. Good thing we’re already acquainted,” he writes on Facebook.
The incident occurred in Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina on Tuesday. Oppenheimer says he heard the alarm sound from his motion detector moments prior.
“I looked behind me and didn’t see anything,” Oppenheimer tells CNN, “But about a minute later, the bear came along and was practically in front of me.”
The video begins with Oppenheimer relaxing on a very comfortable-looking chair covered in pillows with his phone in hand and shoes off.
Oppenheimer and the bear make contact with the former gripping one of the pillows in fright. It is unclear who was more scared of whom.
The bear, believed to be relatively young, makes a small sound before making a hasty retreat. “My eyeballs certainly got a stretch,” Oppenheimer adds.
Acclimatized Bear
It is not the first time that Oppenheimer has encountered the juvenile bear. He says that the same one has inspected trash cans at his home in the past and even grabbed food from his “bear-proof” bird feeder.
“The bears here are very peaceful,” Oppenheimer tells CNN. “This one just caught me off guard.”
Oppenheimer says that there are several bears in his neighborhood and they are acclimated to humans.
“[I’ve] been thinking for the last year or so to get a rearview mirror for the chaise,” he jokes on his Facebook page.
It was lucky for Oppenheimer that the black bear he encountered was docile. There are far worse bears out there like a huge grizzly known as “The Boss.” The Boss, who lives in Banff National Park in Canada, has been known to eat other bears and even survived being hit by a train
