Bear Kills Another, Delaying Fat Bear Week

Bill Chappell for NPR:

Fat Bear Week, a celebration of brown bears’ survival instincts, brought a grisly reminder of the animals’ predatory nature on Monday, when a male bear, 469, killed a female, 402, at Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska.

The unsettling scene was captured by a popular live webcam that follows the bears on the Brooks River.

This was supposed to be the kickoff for the popular and beloved Fat Bear Week. And I am supposed to be working, but my fuzzy post-race brain is making it hard to focus. So I watched the video of the scene, and the ranger’s summary and explanation of what happened between these two bears and might have been going on.

I’m glad I saw this video AFTER I came back from Whistler where I saw a (albeit) black bear on the first day in Creekside and then ran several hours alone through the woods in the dark.