A 90-year-old woman has fought off a bear after being armed with only a garden chair. Watch how she managed it in the video below:
The Tennessee-based woman, Altha Williams, was sitting on her front porch and relaxing outside when a black bear approached her, with her three cubs nearby the mother.
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After the bear attacked her, Altha’s quick thinking led her to use the garden chair she was previously resting on to bat the deadly animal away from her.
She told WVLT: “I was just sitting here, hadn’t been here more than two or three minutes. Evidently, it heard me. It just made a lunge at me.”
The woman said the animal’s 'face was right in my face' when she picked up the garden chair to prevent it from getting any closer to her.
Amazingly, the pensioner walked away from the encounter with only a scratch on her arm and was treated at a local hospital for the wound, which was wrapped up in a bandage.
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Altha told the publication: “I’ve been praising the Lord ever since then, because I may not be here.”
This isn’t the first time she’s come into contact with bears in her Sevierville home, living near Smoky Mountains National Park.
“Last year I had a bear with three cubs,” she explained.
“It could have been the same bear, but it hadn’t ever bothered me,” explaining how they usually turn in the other direction of humans after being scared.
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“They’re afraid of you, so this is really unusual,” she said of the recent incident.
The pensioner did the right thing, fending the bear off with a prop, a spokesperson of Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency said.
“The way she responded was exactly what we tell people to do,’ Matt Cameron told the outlet.
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“To get big, yell at them, make noise. To intimidate them. Pat on the back for how she responded; it very well could have saved her life.”
That was not the end of the bear encounter. The bear then headed towards Altha’s neighbour following the event, who shot the animal.
“After the mother bear swatted at the victim, it left that area and, from what we are told, it charged another neighbour who shot it,” Cameron explained. “Once that happened, there was no choice but to euthanize her.”
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The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency has a protocol for euthanizing bears that have contact with humans in neighbourhoods and other residential areas.
Gabriella Ferlita