Sitting at my desk working and hear a big splash in the pool and I know who it is! I hope he wasn't too freaked out by all of the fireworks last night, poor big buddy.
This is random, but as someone who's always been around (domesticated) animals: approach slowly, hand canted down, and hand held loosely out, knuckles first, fingers dangling.
(Well, anyway, this works for dogs - they want to smell you before you get close)
Yeah, a bear will fucking kill you if you try that. They're beautiful, magnificent creatures and *incredibly* territorial, especially brown bears.
Bears are not dogs. And it isn't a pleasant death.
From what I've read about North American bears, they mostly follow standard predator logic, in that if they don't think they can kill you / eat you without harming themselves, they'll kind of default to apathy, unless the human is cornering them / approaching too close.
(also, random aside: I lose my mind every time I see that video of a black bear wandering up to a picnic and some dude in shorts has the SOLID BRASS BALLS to "shoo" the bear away. And not to be humiliated, the bear takes one half-hearted "fuck you too" swat at the guy's leg before wandering off.
Our biggest concern is going outside at night and accidentally startling one, particularly a mom with cubs. Our house rule is to open the door, loudly say "hello bears!", wait a few seconds, and then go out.
And that approach is basically true of nearly any "dangerous" larger animal. They attack when startled - standard fight-or-flight.
So don't startle them. Bears know they're big, so they're not SCARED per se, but that also means they know they can win many fights.
But I also think a lot of people have a misperception that meat-eaters (and bears are actually mostly vegetarian or fish eaters) just go around trying to murder anything and everything in their path.
And a once wise woman said "ain't nobody got time for that!"
