I remember one of my aunt's was camping in one of the national parks (I think it was Yosemite), and one morning a bear came into camp, broke into the car and started eating all the food out of the sealed plastic food locker.
They say that one of the most important survival rules, is to never get between a mamma bear, and her cubs.
Unfortunately the bear broke that rule, as my aunt was coming out of the adults tent, to discover the bear was between her and the kids tent.
She just charged in, and started beating the bear over the head with a magazine, and scared it off.
It never came back.
I have some friends in North Carolina, who have a black bear seasonal migration route through their property - a couple of times a year, they'll have a few families of bears pass through their garden in one direction, then back again later in the year.
The kids are smart enough to stay out of the way, but I do worry about their pets.
Mind you, there was that amazing footage of that guy in Greenland (if I recall) who had to leave his sled dog outside his shack, and was looking on in horror as a group of Polar bears approached his chained up husky.
Amazingly, the dog adopted a play posture, and the bears all came over to say hi, spending a long time playing with the dog (which alarmingly involved putting the dogs head right inside their mouths), before eventually moving along, leaving the dog completely unharmed.
This behaviour repeated, every time the bears made their seasonal transit, with the dog, and the bears becoming closely bonded "friends".
So, I guess if you come down for breakfast in the morning, and find a bear ransacking your fridge, either get swatting with the tv guide, or adopt the downward dog position, and act friendly...
these stories never end well for the animal, makes me very sad. I do hate humans more and more...
