An Arizona mother counted herself lucky Monday after her teenage son escaped a black bear that had broken into the family’s cabin, leaving him with only severe scratches on his face and arms.
“It truly could have been a lot worse,” Carol Eddington Hawkins told NBC News. “We still can’t believe it happened, but we feel very lucky.”
Hawkins said her 15-year-old son, Brigham, was “just relaxing” Thursday evening in one of two cabins her parents own on their Alpine property when the bear “came in through the front door and snatched my son’s head.”
“The front door was open to let in the cool night air,” Hawkins said. “Brigham was watching YouTube and didn’t know what was going on.”
But when the bear attacked, Brigham “started screaming,” she said, “and punched the bear in the nose and cheek, then punched it in the forehead and the top of its head.”
His mother said his brother, Parker, 18, heard the screams and ran over from another cabin.
“Parker thought it was some kind of big dog at first,” Hawkins said, “Then the bear saw him and started chasing him. Brigham had time to slam the barn door.”
Hawkins said Parker ran back to the other cabin with the bear’s breath on his neck.
“He walked around there for a while while we were watching him through the window,” Hawkins said of the bear, “Then he sat on the couch on the porch and looked around. It was unbelievable.”
Hawkins said while she called 911 and called neighbors for help, her husband, Shane, waited for the bear to look away before rushing to the shed where Brigham was hiding.
“He slammed the door in the bear’s face,” she said.
By the time Arizona Game and Fish Department officials arrived, the bears were no longer surrounding the cabin.
“After arriving on scene, AZGFD wildlife officers quickly located the bear and were able to remove it,” the agency said in a statement.
The bear was an estimated three-year-old male, and its carcass will be examined for diseases.
Hawkins said her son was “doing better” and had already had a rabies shot as a precaution, and she didn’t know why the bear attacked.
“It could just be that he was hungry,” she said, “but that’s not normal behavior for a bear.”
Had Parker not intervened, Brigham could have died, Hawkins said.
“He has a neurological disorder and there’s no way he would have been able to escape the bear,” she said. “It would have taken several miracles happening at the same time to save him.”
Of the 16 bear attacks in Arizona since 1990, two have been fatal, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department. The most recent fatality occurred last year in Prescott, when a black bear attacked a 66-year-old man while he was having his morning coffee in a wooded area where he was building his cabin.
Earlier this month, on May 19, hikers exploring the remote area of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming were attacked by a grizzly bear. A 35-year-old Massachusetts man survived.
It’s not even summer yet, and there have already been two reported bear attacks.
In both cases, the man survived the man-vs-beast confrontation, albeit bloody. The same could not be said for one of the bears.
Most recently, a 15-year-old boy was sitting in his family’s cabin in the town of Alpine, Arizona, on Thursday when a black bear jumped through the open door and snatched the boy’s face, according to a report from the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
“The animal then left the shed, approached other family members, then re-entered the shed and scratched the victim on the arm,” authorities said in a statement.
The boy’s family was able to scare the bear away, and wildlife officers from the Arizona Department of Wildlife arrived shortly thereafter and “were able to quickly locate and remove the bear,” the report said.
“The bear was a male black bear, estimated to be about three years old,” the department said. “The carcass will be examined by the department’s wildlife health specialists to determine if it is disease-free.”
Meanwhile, the boy’s family wished him well.
