You won’t believe this!
This past weekend, a black bear was spotted casually wandering through a shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska.
The bear strolled into the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. on Sunday, according to a spokesman for JBER.
Cory Godbout, an employee at a barbershop on the base, had just been waiting for his first client when he noticed the unexpected visitor approaching the store.
“My colleague cutting hair yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout remembered.
“Then I looked up from my phone, and there it was, right in front of me. We all just ran to the break room and shut the door behind us.”
A few minutes later, Godbout and his coworkers cautiously came out and followed the bear into the store, where it grabbed a peach and enjoyed a snack.
He noted that several customers were making quite a scene, trying to scare the bear out of the grocery store.
But before long, the bear made its way back to the barbershop.
“By then, we managed to run back and close the door,” Godbout said.
From a safe distance, they watched as the bear, in an awkward turn of events, used the restroom in the hallway.
A JBER representative mentioned that conservation law enforcement was present and eventually guided the bear safely to the nearest river and back into the woods.
Colette Brandt, the JBER wildlife program manager, explained in a press release that the bear had inadvertently triggered the automatic door, making this bizarre encounter entirely coincidental.
While reports of bear interactions have declined since bear-proof bins were implemented at military installations, seven bears were unfortunately euthanized in the past year at JBER for safety reasons.
