On a random night in late March in Springfield New Hampshire, a video was taken showing a bear climbing on top of a resident’s home. The individual who posted this described it as “a bear walking a tightrope.”
According to NHFish&Wildlife, there is a population of 6,000 bears in New Hampshire. They claim that New Hampshire is a “bear country”. With an increasing population of bears, it’s possible that rare incidents like these can become more frequent.
The bear shown in the video was a black bear. According to Mass.gov, It’s important to not panic when encountering these kinds of bears. Try to back away whenever you can, and if you’re ever put into a situation where the bear is attacking you, you need to fight back.
According to the North American Bear Center, black bear attacks are extremely rare, with only 61 fatalities since 1900. The chances of being killed by a dog are much higher, so it’s important to not let bears stop you from enjoying the outdoors. Lynn Rogers, who has a PHD in biology says, “In working closely with wild bears, I have used bad bear manners on occasion and been slapped, but the slaps were not that damaging – usually just welts.”
There are many tools at our disposal to stay safe from bears. According to the National Parks Service, one tool is bear spray. To use bear spray properly, keep it somewhere you can easily access since bear attacks can happen at any moment. When using the bear spray, remove the safety, point downward, and spray when the bear is charging at you 20 yards away. Spraying the bear spray 20 yards away from the bear is the necessary distance since bears can travel at 15 yards per second. This will stop the bear. It’s also important to note that bear spray is not a repellent. It’s not something you should apply to yourself or anything on you. Bear spray can be purchased online, or at stores like Walmart. They typically go for $30-$60 per canister.
In the case of this video, it’s unlikely that they had any bear spray near them since they were in their own home, but if you’re ever going on a hike, or in an area that has reportedly had bears, bear spray could prove to be quite useful.
The person involved is lucky that the bear didn’t make any moves, but was just curious as to what was happening. Hopefully more bear encounters are non aggressive like this in the future.
