Reply #119: It actually wasn't me that this happened to -- a neighbor. [View All]

[moriah]

But in the same general area of the Ozarks -- well down a dirt road. And Tim described what happened in great detail because yeah, he freaked out.

He lived alone and had went to sleep without his TV on, and his bedroom window open (screen still present). He woke up to a kind of shredding noise and saw that a brown bear was climbing in his bedroom after having torn the screen. It had been a rough year, drought and such, and the poor thing was likely hungry. There were a lot of hunting cabins in our area so the bear very well might have been making a practice of breaking into them and vacant summer homes trying to find food stores.

He didn't have his rifle in that room. He screamed at the top of his lungs and started waving his arms around, and it scared the bear -- enough to make it turn around and leave the way it came in. Bear really wasn't expecting anyone to be home I imagine.

He didn't have livestock so his rifle was in his closet. We did. Ours lived above our front door, and we had to use it several times when coyotes came on the property and started killing chickens. One attacked one of our dogs and the dog had to be put down because we didn't get there in time.

(The previous poster said he questioned the mental health of anyone who owned a gun. There are valid reasons for owning them. The bear in the house is just one, but was an extreme enough of an example that really happened to someone I know that I figured it'd express my point.)

That being said, yes, I'd have fainted too! ;)

(Edit to clarify: The rifle lived above the front door, not our livestock. Heh!)