A 17-year-old California girl was caught on video shoving a large bear off her fence after the animal took a swipe at her dogs.
“The dog that the bear grabbed, she’s the baby,” Hailey Morinico told NBC News. “I have to protect the baby.”
The black bear had been walking with two cubs atop a fence at the home in Bradbury, east of Los Angeles and in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Footage from the yard showed the family’s four dogs running out to yap at the bears.
Although the cubs bolted and mama bear turned to follow, she also began to swipe at the dogs below.
That’s when Morinico ran out.
“I go over to the bear. I look it in the eyes, and the first thing I think to do is push it, push a bear, push an apex predator, man,” she said in a TikTok video. “And to be honest, I don’t think I pushed her that hard, I just pushed her enough to make her lose her balance.”
The bear fell off the fence and Morinico grabbed the pup and bolted.
It worked out, but it also could’ve gone badly wrong for the youth ― something she knows.
“Do not push bears,” she told KTLA. “Don’t do what I did. You might not have the same outcome.”
Morinico sprained a finger and banged her knee during the encounter.
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