MORGANTOWN, W.Va.– Kelly Dale had never seen a bear in the wild, so when bears started nosing around her family’s property in Monongalia County she was excited about the prospect of catching a glimpse of bear in the woods.
However, Dale got more than what she had bargained for when she was attacked by an aggressive mother bear.
“We have many pictures and videos that I was terribly excited about getting,” says Dale. “They’d travel by here and you could stomp your feet or clap and yell and they’d take off. It’s been between 7:30 in the evening and 1 in the morning that we’ve either seen them or heard them outside”
Dale went out to her car around 10:30 p.m. on June 25 to retrieve an item from the glove box. She says she was only out there for a matter of a few minutes. When she got out of the car and shut the door Dale says she heard a bone chilling growl behind her she’ll never forget.
“I turned around and that’s when I saw the cub and I knew, without a doubt, I was in some sort of trouble,” recalled Dale on WAJR-AM’s Morgantown AM. “Right about then, the mama bear popped out from behind the car and stands up and shows how big and tough she is and charged after me.”
The bear swiped at Dale and put a gash in Dale’s head then swung with the other paw landing a blow on Dale’s torso, bruising her ribs.
“Then she stood over top of me then spun around with her mouth open like she was going to bite me,” said Dale.
Dale was afraid the bear was going to try to bite her neck and knew she had to fight back. So she started screaming at the bear and apparently it did not like the sound of Dale screaming.
“I had been screaming the entire time but I started screaming at her as opposed to screaming in my curled up ball.”
The bear finally gathered her cub and took off. The bear had been marked with two orange tags, indicating it was a nuisance bear and had been rummaging through people’s trash and getting close humans.
“They’ve become less and less afraid of people and they’ve been coming on our porches and sniffing around the windows. Some of them are huge,” said Dale.
Dale went to the hospital the next day to get her wounds treated and said she must still receive rabies shots as a precaution.
“I beg that I never ever even see a bear again.”