Pie-gobbling bear crashes dinner party
Last Updated Tue, 05 Oct 2004 14:57:55 EDT
VANCOUVER – A black bear cub raided a North Vancouver kitchen, gobbling a blackberry pie intended for a dinner party.
Lynn and James Hill were expecting their guests Sunday night, when the young bear apparently walked right into the couple’s kitchen, attracted by the smell of the freshly baked pie.
Hill, who came upon the bear unawares, screamed “blue murder” at the cub, his wife told Vancouver newspaper, the Province.
Hill shouted: “Bad bear! Go away, bad bear!”, but the animal was unfazed, she said.
Apparently the cub then came towards the couple, into the living room.
The Hills eventually managed to get rid of the raider using bear spray left over from their son’s fieldwork in Alaska.
The cub, which weighed about 45 kilograms, ran out of the house. The Hills later realized it had also eaten a block of butter, including its foil, and chewed on more than a dozen apples, oranges, pears and avocados.
The couple moved the dinner party from their home to a restaurant, because of the strong, lingering odour from the spray.
“I don’t think they [the dinner guests] believed our excuse,” Lynne Hill said.
A provincial conservation officer said the bear would be put down if it repeated its stunt. A volunteer with the North Shore Black Bear Network said the cub was harmless, one of six orphans in the area probably looking for food because their natural foods had ripened early and were depleted.
Unlike grizzlies, black bears will abandon their cubs on occasion, Barbara Murray said. She estimated there were as many as 50 bears on the north shore in 2004.
Written by CBC News Online staff
