A 71-year-old Snowmass Village man survived an attack by a black bear this morning.
The bear didn’t.
John Clark surprised the 350-pound boar 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 Department tried to drive it out.
The bear responded with angry 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.
“We certainly have to take action when bears like in this instance show that aggressive behavior toward people,” said Randy Hampton, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.Although black bears are generally considered shy and tend to avoid confrontation, some 32cq people have been injured and one person killed in encounters in Colorado since 1986cq, according to DOW records.
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, Hampton said, in part because many tourists and part-time residents have departed, and locals tend to maintain higher vigilance.
The Clarks, for example, keep their trash in bear-proof containers and know not to leave pet food outside – especially after hearing reports of bears at a nearby monastery and at the neighboring home of movie stars Kurt Russellcq and Goldie Hawncq.
“We are very, very sensitive to the situation up here,” Suzanne Clark said. “We’re very sad this happened.”
The bear apparently entered the garage through a door left unlatched for their dogs, teaching John Clark a painful lesson.
“I’ll open that door a little more carefully the rest of my life, probably,” he said. “I had a real good scare.”
