N.L. woman gets into staring match with polar bear
Last Updated: Monday, April 14, 2008 | 5:47 PM NT
CBC News
A central Newfoundland woman said Monday she always watches for moose when she drives to work, but she never thought she would have to watch for polar bears.
Shauna Abbott from Lumsden was on her way to Gander at 6:30 a.m. NT when she drove up to a polar bear sitting on the Gander Bay Loop highway near Anchor Brook, between Musgrave Harbour and Deadman's Bay.
Abbott slammed on her brakes and stopped her truck just a few feet away from the bear.
"So I put the truck in reverse and I blew the horn to try and frighten it, and so it stopped, and it just kind of looked at me, and stayed there for a little while and turned around, walked a few steps and turned around and looked at me again. I think it just really didn't know what to do any more than I did," she said.
Abbott said she was too terrified to turn around, so she sat, staring at the polar bear for ten minutes until it finally walked off the road towards the water.
Her encounter won't scare her out of driving along the route again, she said.
"I probably will think about it, but I think it's probably a once in a lifetime deal. I don't expect that I'll ever see that again. I would hope not," she said.
Officers with the Department of Natural Resources were scouring the area by helicopter in hopes of tracking the animal.
Conservation officers caught two polar bears over the weekend — one in Cape Freels near Lumsden, the other in Bonaventure on the Bonavista peninsula.
Rebecca Jeffery, a wildlife biologist with the Newfoundland and Labrador government, said at the end of March that while sightings of polar bears may be up, that doesn't mean there are more; they might just be moving in areas where they are more likely to be seen.
