An Arizona mother counted her blessings Monday after her teenage son escaped a black bear that burst into their family cabin with only a few nasty scratches on his face and arm.
“This really could have been a lot worse,” Carol Edington Hawkins told NBC News. “We still don’t believe this happened, but we also feel very blessed.”
Hawkins said her 15-year-old son, Brigham, was “just chilling” Thursday evening in one of the two cabins her parents have on their property in Alpine when the bear “walked in through the front door and hit him over the head.” hit’.
“The front door was open to let in the cool night air,” Hawkins said. “Brigham was watching YouTube and didn’t realize what was happening.”
But as soon as the bear struck, “Brigham started screaming,” she said. “I grabbed him on the nose and the cheek and then went ahead and grabbed his forehead and the top of his head.”
His 18-year-old brother, Parker, heard the screams and ran to the other cabin, their mother said.
“Parker thought it was some kind of big dog at first,” Hawkins said. “Then the bear saw Parker and started chasing him. That gave Brigham time to slam the door of his cabin.”
Parker, Hawkins said, reached the other cabin with the bear breathing down his neck.
“He was pacing there for a while while we watched him through the window,” Hawkins said of the bear. “Then he sat on a bench on the porch and just looked around. It was crazy.”
Hawkins said that while she called 911 and a neighbor for help, her husband, Shane, waited until the bear looked away and then darted toward the cabin where Brigham was holed up.
“He slammed the door in the bear’s face,” she said.
By the time Arizona Game and Fish Department officers arrived, the bear was no longer besieging the cabins.
“After arriving on scene, AZGFD wildlife officers were able to quickly locate and dispatch the bear,” the agency said in a statement.
The bear was a male estimated to be about 3 years old and his carcass will be tested for disease.
Hawkins said her son is “doing better” and has already received a rabies vaccination as a precaution. She said she doesn’t know why the bear attacked.
“Maybe he was just hungry,” she said. “But that’s just not the normal way a bear behaves.”
If Parker had not intervened, Brigham could have died, Hawkins said.
“He has a neurological condition and would not have been able to escape the bear,” she said. “It took a few miracles at the same time to save him.”
Of 16 bear attacks on people in Arizona since 1990, two were fatal, according to the Game and Fish Department. The most recent fatality occurred last year in Prescott, where a 66-year-old man drinking a morning cup of coffee in a wooded area where he was building a cabin was attacked by a black bear.
Earlier this month, on May 19, a hiker exploring the backcountry of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was attacked by a grizzly bear. The 35-year-old man from Massachusetts also survived.
It’s not yet summer and two bear attacks have already been reported.
In both cases, the humans emerged from their man-versus-beast confrontations bloody but still alive. The same couldn’t be said for any of the bears.
Recently, a 15-year-old Arizona teenager was sitting at his family’s cabin in the town of Alpine on Thursday when a black bear burst through an open door and struck him in the face, the Arizona Game and Fish Department reported.
“It then exited the cabin and approached other family members before entering the cabin a second time and swiped at the victim’s arm,” the agency said in a statement.
The boy’s family was able to startle the bear and AZGFD wildlife officers arrived a short time later and “were able to quickly locate the bear and send it away.”
“The bear was a male black bear estimated to be approximately three years old,” the agency said. “The carcass will be examined and tested for disease by the department’s wildlife health specialists.”
Meanwhile, the boy’s family counted their blessings.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
