A video of a teenager from California has gone viral after she won a standoff with a wild mama bear in her backyard over Memorial Day weekend.
Per NBC Los Angeles, security camera footage showed a bear and two cubs walking along a backyard wall in a house in California. The family’s dogs rush outside to combat the bear and her two cubs.
- The bear then pawed at the dogs, showing the battle was indeed on.
However, a teenage girl joined the confrontation. Hailey Morinico ran toward the bear after she heard her dogs barking, she said in a TikTok video.
She then shoved the animal in response. The bear fell backward off the wall. She said the shove was pure instinct to save her dogs.
- “I was like ... ‘there’s a bear and it is taking my dog. It is lifting it up off the ground,’” Morinico said, according to NBC Los Angeles. “In that split second, I decided to push the bear, like it was nothing, apparently.
- “I pick up my other dog and I scram.”
Morinico told KABC that she had a sprained finger on her hand from when she pushed the bear. But, she said, the dogs — one of whom is a service animal for her mom — are OK after the fight.
- “I didn’t want to know what would happen if the bear hurt her or even took her, so I had to do what I had to do,” Morinico said.
One wildlife expert told KABC that people should not follow Morinico’s advice, saying the best practice is to stay inside.
- “I couldn’t fall asleep last night thinking of all the horrible possibilities that could have happened,” her mother, Citlally Morinico, told Today.com. “Thankfully, nothing did.”