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Bears are one of the strongest predators on the planet. They can smell a scent 20 miles away upwind, run upwards of 40 mph, are have teeth and claws that are over an inch long. Attributes like these mean that they are built for hunting and it’s always best to try and avoid them.
These days it seems that there are more and more run-ins between people and bears, specifically black bears. They have proven to be incredibly resilient animals who’ve learned to adapt to our human ways and that has led to an uptick in the number of incidents.
Oftentimes the bears are simply being bears and looking for an easy meal. They smell a birdfeeder or trash and will rummage through it to get a bite to eat. On a few occasions, bears have been known to break into cars to get at a candy bar or tasty treat inside, and left the vehicle torn to shreds in their relentless pursuit of a snack.
In many states when a bear becomes a nuisance, by continuously breaking into dumpsters or other sources of food and being too comfortable around humans, they get tagged and trapped. The bear is then relocated far away from where it was captured and released in the hopes that it will not find its way back.
This was what authorities in Florida were trying to do when they received reports of a 400 pound black bear wandering through a residential neighborhood in Alligator Point, Florida. The bear was spotted going through the trash before entering into a home and had already been ear tagged, so they knew it wasn’t the first time this particular bear had wandered too close for comfort.
After locating the massive animal they hit it with a tranquilizer dart, but that spooked the bear and it took off towards the ocean. The bear started to swim out into the Gulf of Mexico just as the tranquilizer was taking effect.
If he went out too far, he would certainly drown and so a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologist looking on went in right after him. Adam Warwick jumped into the ocean without even thinking twice about his own health and safety in order to try and rescue the huge bear. He swam out to it, grabbed the bear around the neck, and started kicking his way back towards shore.
When he first reached the bear it was still awake, but the tranquilizer was quickly causing it to lose its ability to move. The panicked bear struggled to stay afloat and like any drowning animal, it tried to climb on Adam to stay above the water, pushing him down in the process.
Thankfully for Adam, the bear stopped struggling soon afterwards and he reached shallower water. Working calmly, he grabbed the bear by the scruff and dragged him as far as he could using the water to buoy the bear’s massive weight.
Once they reached the shore, it became too difficult to move the heavy animal and so a backhoe was brought in and picked up the groggy bear. From the beach it was loaded onto a truck and driven far away, eventually being relocated to Osceola National Forest.
In the end, the bear survived the traumatizing ordeal and suffered no injuries. Incredibly, Adam suffered only one scratch from his daring rescue mission.
At any moment the semi-lucid bear could have easily bit or swiped at him, but it never once even tried to. All in all, it seems that the worst case scenario of the tranquilized bear running into the ocean turned into the best case scenario of a successful rescue with no one harmed.
Watch the video below for the full story:
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