Bear eats Alaska woman's kayak right after she thanks it for not eating her kayak - Action News
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Bear eats Alaska woman's kayak right after she thanks it for not eating her kayak

For all of their silly and playful antics, bears can be incredibly serious when it comes to eating and incredibly weird about what they consider food.

Kayaker Mary Maley learned a rather inconvenient lesson after pepper spraying a curious black bear in Alaska

A video being shared widely on YouTube this week shows a woman in Alaska unsuccessfully begging a black bear (not pictured) to refrain from eating her kayak (also not pictured). (Photo illustration. Kayak: Shimon Bar/Shutterstock, Bear: Arko Datta/Reuters)

For all of their sillyand playfulantics, bears canbeincredibly serious when it comes to eating and incredibly weird about what they consider food.

Strawberry-rhubarb pie? Nah. Beans? No thanks.A plastic kayak, though ... that did nicely for one bear's lunch in Alaska this week.

YouTubeuserMary Maleyuploaded a video to her account on Tuesday that purports to show what happened during arecent bear encounter she hadin Southeast Alaska.

According to the video's caption, Maleywas on a 172-kilometresolo kayak trip in Alaska that was intended to go from Ketchikan to Petersburg. Her journey was cut short, however, after shestopped to rest outside a U.S. Forest Service cabin in Berg Bay.

"I had just carried my tent, food, and all my gear into the cabin to dry while I went on a 4 mile hike that begins just behind the cabin," she writes."I heard something outside as I ate my lunch, and well, I never got to go on that hike."

Maley says she started filming the black bear outside her temporary shelterabout fiveminutes after itarrived.

"Thank you for leaving my kayak alone!" she shouts to the bear at the beginning of the video as it explores the site.

Then she gets a lot less friendly with the animal.

"I'm going to pepper spray you in the face, that's what I'm gonna do to you," she threatens before actually shooting pepper spray towards the bear. "Go away!"

As Maley continued yelling, it slowly walked over to her kayak and started chewing.

"Stop it, bear!Stop it.Bear.Bear.Bear...You're breaking my kayak! Why are you doing that? Why are you breaking my kayak?" she shouts."Bear! Please stop breaking my things! It's not it's not evenfood. It doesn't even taste good! It's just plastic!"

Maley explainsin the caption of her video that the bear continued to gnaw at the kayak for another fiveto 10 minutes after she stopped filming.

After retrieving the chewed up vessel, Maleysays she swam to a boat anchored in the bay nearby. She then managed to hitch a ride to Wrangell, Alaska, where as of Tuesday she was still trying to repair her only means of transportation.

The Alaska Dispatch, which has been unable to contact the kayaker, notes that this isn't the first case of bear-on-vehicle violence to have been reportedin the area.

"Back in 2009,"the newspaper writes, "a beartore into a plane parked in Southwest Alaska."