Fla. Woman Thwarts Bear Attack by Throwing a Bag of Cookies at the Animal

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30-04-2025

A Florida woman said she had been walking her dog in her neighborhood when a bear started coming "after her dog"
She said she eventually escaped the bear by distracting it with cookies, while she grabbed her dog and ran away
She said that the incident showed an important lesson of bringing some kind of item to scare the animals away if they get too close
A Florida woman and her dog escaped a charging bear — all thanks to a bag of cookies.
Fla. resident Kristen Savage had been walking her dog Ringo in the Sylvan Lake Reserve neighborhood near her home when a bear came after her dog, she told WESH-TV, WKMG-TV and Fox 35 Orlando.
'The bear snuck up behind me, went around my leg, and started biting at my dog,' Savage said, per WESH-TV. 'I was hanging [Ringo] like a piñata basically in the air, but every time I put my dog down on the ground, she would go after him again.'
She said she had spun to try to keep her dog away, but ended up falling down and sustaining a few scrapes to her legs and hands. The black bear even put her dog in its mouth for a brief moment, according to her recollection of the incident.
Related: How to Prevent Bear Attacks and What to Do If a Bear Approaches You, According to Experts
"At one point, I thought, 'We aren't going to get out of this,' because there is no one here to help me," Savage explained, per the outlets.
She told WESH-TV that she started 'waving' her hands and 'screaming' at the large bear to get her attention, which prompted the bear to 'back off' for a bit, but when she stopped the movements, the bear 'sprinted right at us again.'
At that moment, she told the outlet that she decided to use her only other option — a bag of cookies that her mother had given her a few minutes earlier. She said she 'smacked the bear across the face' with the bag of cookies and 'threw them at her face.'
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"I threw the bag at her, and she stopped for a minute, and she sniffed the cookies,' Savage recalled to Fox 35 Orlando. 'As soon as she was distracted by the cookies, I ran!"
She said those few seconds keeping the bear occupied was enough to help her and her dog Ringo get back safely into their house. She shared that her dog was not injured by the incident.
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Savage noted to the outlet that the bear was previously spotted in their neighborhood, and that she even has pictures of her nursing cubs in the backyard, per WESH-TV. According to Fox 35 Orlando, she said that while she didn't 'blame the bear' as she understood 'it was a mother protecting her cubs,' she would also try to be more cautious in the future.
'I think it's an important lesson to always have something on you that can scare them away, like an air horn or a spray,' Savage told WESH-TV. 'And just pay attention to your surroundings.'
'Bears are highly intelligent and adaptable, learning quickly to associate people with food,' The Florida Fish and Wildlife and Conservation Commission (FWC) said on its website. 'Black bears are normally too shy to risk contact with humans, but their powerful need to find food can overwhelm this fear.'
The FWC recommended on its website that if people see a bear, they should try to scare it away 'by yelling, banging pots and pans, using an air horn or anything else that makes a lot of noise.'
Read the original article on People