A black bear found its way inside a hospital at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska early Monday morning, and instead of setting off alarms or knocking things over, it went straight for the easiest thing in the building: a donated bucket of Halloween candy sitting in a hallway. Staff spotted the bear around 2 a.m., and by then it had already made itself at home.
Sherri Warnke, who was at the hospital helping her mother settle in, was walking toward an exit when the bear stepped out of a side hallway about 30 feet ahead of her. The doors behind her only opened with a badge, so her only way out was an exit 60 yards back. She backed away slowly toward it while doctors came down the hallway to take pictures of the bear. Staff eventually let her leave through a back way, and the bear exited the same way it came in. Warnke later said that if she had been about 15 seconds faster, the two of them would have run into each other.
The timing is hard to ignore. It is mid-October, bears are eating as much as they can before hibernation, and Halloween means candy is suddenly everywhere. Nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged, which makes this one of those stories you can enjoy without any bad news attached. Here on the Suncoast, our version of a wildlife encounter usually involves a gator on a golf course or a manatee near a dock, so a bear in a hospital hallway feels like a different world.
What’s the most unexpected place you have ever run into a wild animal? Tell us in the comments.
