The father of a man recently swatted by a bear says he is “extremely lucky.”
The man, who asked not to be named so his 19-year-old son would not be publicly identified, said his son was in his garage at Regency Place in Garibaldi, “talking to his girlfriend, just standing there,” when the dangerous encounter occurred.
The mother bear had been near the garbage cans that were about 15 feet from the garage but then the animal ventured further, the man told The Squamish Chief. “The bear came into the garage and took a swing at him. My son was standing maybe three or four feet into the garage. There were two cubs there and one of the cubs might have come close to the door. The mother might have come close to the door and saw humans there, and that startled them.”
The bear swatted at the young man. “Luckily he moved, because those claws are sharp,” the father recounted. “It still caught his hand. It was a superficial scratch… it did rip his pants. He screamed at the bear immediately and the bear took off.”
The father is relieved his son is OK. The man was taken to hospital as a precaution but had only superficial injuries.
But he’s concerned that next time, the bear will encounter a small child and the encounter will not go as well.
“Watch out because this bear is aggressive,” he warned. “This bear came into the garage unprovoked and took a swing at my son.”
He is concerned that the bear is showing her cubs to search for garbage, and the bears might live nearby for many years. “You have a bear teaching two young cubs to get garbage… and they are inside the city limits. So people should know that.”
The father did not offer an opinion on what should be done about the bear but suggested that locking up garbage might not be enough to prevent future problems in the neighbourhood. Some of the nearby homes have fruit trees and the owners do not pick up the fruit that falls, he said. “I know you can’t teach people common sense.”
“It is not our decision about destroying animals or not – that up to the conservation officer, “ said the dad, adding his son was lucky in the May 22 encounter. “It could have been a horror story.”
He said because the bears are habituated to humans, the conservation officer should assess the risk of “dealing with these bears in this community for the next 10 years.”
