A 71-year-old Snowmass Village man survived an attack by a black bear Thursday morning.
The bear didn’t.
John Clark surprised the 350-pound bear in his garage when he went to feed his dogs about 7:15 a.m.
“I walked in, and I see that the metal container on the dog food is on the floor,” he said.
“It might have taken a half a second and the bear is on me. I just see this shadow of a bear head coming at me and latching onto my arm,” Clark said.
Clark punched the bear on the snout to get free and retreated to his house, but not before the bear took a swipe at him, slashing the back of his jacket and digging a gouge out of his left calf.
More than 45 minutes later, the bear still was in the garage when state wildlife officer Kevin Wright and deputies from the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office tried to drive it out. The bear responded with growls and frightening charges.
Wright “ran out very, very quickly,” said Clark’s wife, Suzanne. “It really scared him.”
At that point, the decision was made to dispatch the bear, and Wright killed it in the Clarks’ driveway with a single blast from his shotgun.
Faced with a diminished supply of berries and acorns because of late-spring frosts, a number of marauding bears raised concerns earlier this summer from Boulder to Aspen to Durango.
Reports of bears getting into garbage and homes have dropped in recent weeks, according to Randy Hampton, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, in part because many tourists and part-time residents have departed.
