Sometimes, there’s a bear, and that bear is intent on eating your kayak. There are several courses of action you can take to prevent that from happening, but unfortunately for the woman who recently had her kayak eaten by a bear in Berg Bay, Alaska, they often don’t work.
In a YouTube video posted Tuesday, we see a black bear attacking a kayak belonging to Mary Maley, near a U.S. Forest Service cabin in Berg Bay.
“During a solo kayak trip, intended to go from from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Petersburg, Alaska, a bear attacked my kayak. (…) I heard something outside as I ate my lunch, and well, I never got to go on that hike,” Maley wrote in the video’s description.
At the beginning of the video, we see the bear moving away from the kayak. Maley thanks the bear, but then proceeds to pepper spray it, which again turns the animal’s interest to the green boat a few meters away.
Unfortunately, after that, the bear stops listening to reason. “Why are you breaking my kayak? Stop it, bear!” Maley pleads, but the bear just continues gnawing on the kayak, severely damaging it in the process. At one point, Maley reminds the bear that it’s the end of September. “You’re supposed to be asleep,” she says. Maley’s constant pleas to the bear might sound unreasonable as the bear is very unlikely to understand her, but they’re at least understandable, since that kayak was her only way out of Berg Bay.
After the bear left, Maley claims she had to swim to a German-flagged sailing vessel, which gave her a ride to the nearby town of Wrangell, where she’s trying to repair her kayak.
