Wildlife officials are looking for a black bear in Colorado, who was behaving “atypically” when it tried to drag a 19-year-old out of his sleeping bag by the head.
The teen, identified only as Dylan by the Guardian, was camping at Glacier View Ranch with a group of kids survivalists when he was awoken early Sunday morning to a bear attack. Dylan supposedly hit and punched the the bear biting his head, and other staffers at the camp awoke and rushed to help him, yelling and swatting at the animal:
The teen told KMGH-TV that the bear dragged him up to 3.5 metres (12ft) before he was able to free himself.
“The crunching noise, I guess, was the teeth scraping against the skull as it dug in,” said the teen, who teaches wilderness survival at the camp owned by the Rocky Mountain Conference of Seventh Day Adventists.
Ahhh! Despite that horrifying auditory description, Dylan was treated “briefly” at the hospital, then released, so I guess he’s relatively okay. But would you ever be okay again if you woke up with your skull in a bear’s mouth?
No one else was hurt in the incident, but it is extremely unusual for a black bear to attack someone in this way. They are generally not aggressive unless surprised or looking for food. Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said that traps have been set and if a black bear is found in one it will be euthanized and DNA tested to see if it was the same one that attacked Dylan. It must have left a lot of saliva behind.