A man wearing a bear costume is coming for the real bears

There’s a version of this line in every story I read about the man who authorities caught donning a bear costume in Alaska: “It wasn’t immediately known what the man was trying to accomplish.” The ignorance is palpable. How uninformed we all are.

It all started on a Monday, the Alaska Dispatch News reports, when a friendly, peaceful crew safely gathered behind a weir to watch a mom and her bear cubs feed on some salmon in the nearby Chilkoot River near Haines, Alaska. This is presumably typical Alaskan behavior.

What’s “atypical,” these reports allege, is what happened next: A man, decked out in a full-body bear costume, sprinted within five to 10 feet of where the mom and her cubs lingered and began “jumping up and down.”

One “authority,” Alaska Fish and Game technician Lou Cenicola, moved the mom out of the way for the bear costume man’s “safety,” but it didn’t matter—the man in the bear costume was already on his way out, driving away from the scene, bear head still affixed to his head.

“This is not the first time we’ve encountered a man in a bear suit,” Alaska Fish and Wildlife spokesman Megan Peters said.