I haven’t taken note of a bear-related news story in a coupla years. The Denver Post has a great one with a don’t-miss photo of the bear during the actual caper.

… as the bear shuffled around the car looking for a way out, he bumped into the gear shift and put the automatic transmission into neutral, sending the car rolling 125 feet back down a hill …

Interesting: On Bay Area Newspaper Group sites, this story has been retitled as “Bear gets into car for peanut butter and jelly sandwich, honks horn, goes on short joyride.” After a headline like that, what’s the fun of reading the story?

[previously on Bears In the News]

It seems that in Macedonia, you can sue an animal. So when a bear ransacked a beekeeper’s hives, said beekeeper took the bear to court, suing for damages. And won. You may ask: Uh, who will pay? Don’t you worry, Macedonian courts think of everything:

A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars (1,726 pounds) [roughly US$3500] damage it caused to the hives.

[more Bears In the News]

I’m a bit late picking this one up, but the pictures alone make it worth circling back to: A black bear recently escaped from oncoming highway traffic near Donner Summit by jumping over the side of a bridge. The poor creature spent the night trapped beneath the roadway, on the bridge’s superstructure, and was hanging on for dear life by the next day. A rescue effort was mounted; a tranq dart was employed; all’s well that ends well.

[more Bears In the News]

Colorado Division of Wildlife officers were called to a school near Boulder on Tuesday to deal with a drunk and disorderly, bear. The wobbly bear was spotted in a neighborhood in Lyons, near Boulder, and she was having a hard time walking. Officers said the bear was probably drunk from eating fermented apples.

With video (!), so you can see for yourself: This bear was wasted!

[previous editions of Bears in the News]

This one reminds me a bit of those 90s-era feel-good Chevron commercials: Do people delay their plans to construct new power lines just so a mama bear and her cubs can sleep peacefully through the bitter Wisconsin winter? People do.

[previous editions of Bears in the News]

I love it when there’s a bear in the news! This time we’ve got a 600 pound black bear up in Pennsylvania who decided he’d hibernate under some poor family’s porch this winter. There’s only one way this can go:

On Sunday, Sainvil sent his two children, ages 8 and 9, outside to play in the snow. “After 15 or 20 minutes, they came back screaming, ‘Dad, Dad! There’s a bear under the house!’” Sainvil said.

Earlier today, the bear was relocated without incident.

[previous editions of Bears in the News]

The English translation offered at this Russian news site ain’t exactly perfect. Excellent.

Drunk man has tried to scuffle with a bear in a zoo in Ukraine and has been heavily hit… . [The man] decided to show his force, jumped over the gate and started to pretend a trainer. In response, the bear weighing 270 kilograms [595 pounds] seriously hit the man. more…

[Spotted at Fark. Blurry bear photo from PDPhoto.org. Thank you for visiting mahnamahna.net, where we do the wacky measurement conversions for you.]

Animal experts in Croatia say a bear has learned how to trick people to let him in by knocking at the door. They believe the 35-stone [490-pound] brown bear probably learned the trick while nudging a door to get it to open. more…

[spotted at Follow Me Here; previous Bears In the News: here and here]

“When state wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby — dozens of empty beer cans.” The full details reveal that this bear has some taste: “Fish and Wildlife enforcement Sgt. Bill Heinck said the bear did try one can of Busch, but ignored the rest. The beast then consumed about 36 cans of Rainier.”

[previous Bears in the News is here; thanks to Spike for the scoop]

This smells like a hoax to me (where’d the picture come from?) but I don’t care. I love bears. And here we’ve got one that came across a U.S. Navy submarine and decided to try to make a snack of it.

[found on jwz’s Journal]