When Lynn O’Connor took three dogs out for a walk near her country property on September 9, the canines took off running to chase what she assumed were some cows grazing ahead. She was wrong.
The three dogs had their interest piqued by a black bear, and O’Connor looked up to see that the beast was only about two yards away from her. For the moment, that is. The bar was “coming at me swiping and huffing,” O’Connor said, and had its head close to the ground as if it were ready to charge. She had to think fast.
The first thing that popped into her head was a story on CBC radio about a man who found himself face to face with a bear. He ended up punching his way out of the fight.
“So I punched her,” O’Connor said, adding that her knuckles were scarred to prove it. “I got three good punches in.”
Three wasn’t enough though, as the bear was now really angry and determined to get O’Connor. The woman said she had “a moment of clarity” when she knew the bear was going to attack no matter what she did. The only thing to do was to drop to the ground and roll up into a ball. The bear attacked, all right, leaving O’Connor covered in bruises but, thankfully, alive.
O’Connor said she eventually needed 18 metal staples in her head to close up a gash left by the bear’s powerful swipe. And the three dogs—two were hers while one belonged to a neighbor—who ran up to the bear turned up to be O’Connor’s salvation. They chased the bear away she said after an attack that she estimated was over in seconds.
It turns out O’Connor’s assessment of the bear’s sex and intent was probably correct as she saw a bear cub galloping across the meadow, which she assumed belonged to the mama bear who attacked her. “That explains everything,” she said.
After dusting herself off O’Connor retrieved her phone from the dirt and called her family, who called rescue medical workers.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the incident, and said they found and killed what they believed was the attacking bear the next day. But the bear killed turned out to be a male that weighed about 120 pounds, so it is not clear if this was the same bear that attacked O’Connor. The meat from the bear was donated to the U.S. Air Force.
Experts say the best way to avoid a bear attack is to avoid bears, and they advise scaring them away if you’re hiking by making noise around places they visit like streams and berry patches. You should also travel in groups and carry bear spray.
The wildlife service said O’Connor did the right thing in her situation though; she had no other choice but to punch the bear and try to intimidate it.
