Watch This California Teen Push a Bear to Protect Her Dogs
One of the strangest bear encounters ever was caught on security camera footage in California on Memorial Day 2021. A 17-year-old California girl has gone viral after a video shows her pushing a mama bear off a brick wall to save her dogs.
The video was shared to TikTok by bakedlikepie (Brenda), who is the cousin of the girl in the video. Hailey was inside her home when she head her dogs barking. When she went outside to investigate, she witnessed the bear attacking her pets and she just reacted. You can see in the video, at one point, the bear actually has one of the smaller dogs in her grip.
Here's the actual unaltered Vivint security footage (without the music). You can hear how real the situation was with all the growling and barking without the background music present.
The video has garnered over 45 million views in less than 24 hours. Because of this, Hailey took to TikTok to explain the bizarre encounter from her own words.
I can't overstate enough, this is not how you should react to a bear encounter. Hailey was extremely lucky (see also: blessed), her and her dogs got away with only minor injuries. Considering that mama bear had at least one cub with her, this could have a gone a completely different way. While I surely understand wanting to protect your fur babies, direct physical contact with an apex predator is not the way to go.