Gatlinburg, Tennessee might be a popular vacation destination for the beautiful surrounding Smokey Mountains, but just because it’s often full of visitors doesn’t mean the wildlife is shy about traversing some of the space where houses now stand.
A surprise encounter
In 2015, a video of a bear encounter in the town surfaced and immediately went viral – not only for the human’s reaction but the bear’s as well.
To put it bluntly, they both scared the living daylights out of one another and the moment was caught on video.
There’s no indication as to whether someone was standing by with a camera waiting for it all to happen or if the footage is from a mounted camera that happened to be pointed in the right direction at the time.
But what we do know is that as the bear moseys around the front of the garage of a residential home, a man is coming around from the back. It looks like a disaster in the making.
It’s not good to scare bears and it’s even worse to turn your back and run from them. That said, it’s really hard to remember the rules when one is lurking in your driveway on a sunny afternoon.
The reactions
Apparently, both the man and bear thought they were alone out there. But it didn’t take long for them to see that’s wasn’t the case.
They both turn the corner at the same time and it takes less than a second for each to realize what they’re seeing and get a big, unpleasant surprise.
Both jump back and run away.
We don’t see the man again because, well, why would you take your life into your hands by going back in the same direction. We’d have run all the way to the next county after that.
The bear makes it to the other end of the house before composing itself and turning around.
“I like how the bear runs away then realizes wait a minute…..i’m a bear,’ then turns around,” one commenter joked.
And they’re right. That bear seemed to be wondering what all the fuss was about one he walked away. He’s probably not that scared of humans – he was just surprised.
Human: 0 Bear: 1
The bear decides that his original path really was the one he needed, so – perhaps remembering that he’s the big, bad bear – he starts to walk around the garage door again.
But the human isn’t foolhardy enough to still be there.
So after a big “no thanks!” the first time around, the bear seems ready to meet whatever lies around the worker. Luckily, it’s all clear. No mauling today.
For once, read the comments
For once, reading the comments is actually a good idea. Since this particular version of the video was posted in 2017 by NineCaribou Productions, 14.4 million people have viewed it (and there have been dozens more uploads). What can we say, it’s a worthwhile 20 seconds.
A whopping 20k comments appeared on this version as well, which is pretty impressive.
Some people were impressed by the skills of some presumed cameraman (or camerawoman), but most people tried to get into the bear’s head.
“The bear’s like ‘wait..did he just…did he just run away too? Wtf am I doing?'”
And we had the same guess as one clever commenter:
“When the bear went back a second time, I half expected the man to return as well and they would scare each other again like in a cartoon”
But it’s probably a good thing it didn’t end that way. Instead, the bear made it around the house.
No word on the human and whether or not he had some laundry to do after his close encounter.
Be sure to scroll down to see the funny footage for yourself.
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