These are crazy times in Yellowstone National Park. Last Wednesday a hiker from Torrance, Calif., was killed by a grizzly bear while on a park trail with his wife. It marked the first fatal attack inside park boundaries since 1986.
Now comes word that a CNN crew visiting the park on Friday, to film a segment on bear safety, witnessed an actual encounter between a hiker and a black bear.
The hiker, Erin Prophet, was walking backward toward Joffe Lake, away from the advancing bear.
Fortunately, the bear seemed only to be intent on reaching the the water and showed no aggression toward Prophet. Once at the lake's edge, Dave Beecham, one of three men in a kayak, helped her swim safely away.
"When the guys in the kayak offered to pull me across, that seemed like a better plan because the bear seemed like it wanted to be down there by the edge," Prophet told Reuters.
Said park spokesman Dan Hottle, who accompanied the CNN crew: "That was what we refer to as an incident within an incident."
The incident occurred as Yellowstone biologist Kerry Gunther was about to demonstrate the proper way to use bear spray.
Sales of the bear repellent have been brisk in the area, in the wake of last Wednesday's fatal attack on Brian Matayoshi. Neither he nor his wife, who also was attacked but was not seriously injured, carried bear spray.
-- Generic black bear image is courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
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