Hiker Stephanie Rivkin recounts meeting with black bears
STEPHANIE Rivkin ran into two bears while hiking through the woods. Her counterintuitive reaction may have saved her life.
WHAT would you do if you encountered two burly bears in the woods?
That’s what hiker Stephanie Rivkin asked herself after she ran into two black bears while walking on a trail at the Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington, Connecticut, on Friday.
Ms Rivkin posted two videos of her encounter on Facebook, detailing just how close she came to the curious creatures.
“Walking with bears. It put its mouth on my leg. OK OK I almost got bit. Scary,” she wrote alongside one post.
“This is something I’ll never forget. Please god let me get back to my car,” she wrote in another.
“I just felt if I ran, I would be attacked,” Rivkin told NBC Connecticut.
“It was unlike anything I ever experienced before, so I didn’t really know how to react or respond. I kind of just stayed as calm as I could and it seemed to work. I got out alive.”
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) confirmed to NBC the most curious of the two bears was a young male, aged 1 ½ and weighing 68 kilograms.
The trails around the area were subsequently closed and wildlife staff are searching for the bears in question.
The male bear has been captured and relocated once before, and Agency spokesman Dennis Schain said that once recaptured, authorities plan to euthanise it due to the “unusual incident”.
“That is the appropriate action to take after seeing this bear’s behaviour today,” Mr Schain said.
But Ms Rivkin would rather see the bears “moved to a safer area where they’re not putting hikers in danger”.
The tags on the animals’ ears indicate they have been tracked by DEEP since last summer.
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