Weird But True
The aftermath of the black bear’s rampage.
“Cocaine Bear,” meet Coke Bear.
A Canadian black bear likely felt a helluva sugar high after guzzling down 69 cans of soda that it pilfered from a woman’s vehicle.
Accompanying photos show the sweet-toothed bruin surrounded by crushed cans like the aftermath of a teetotaler’s frat party.
“You could hear him, slurping it the whole time,” Sharon Rosel told Jam Press of Cokey the Bear’s pop blitzkrieg, which occurred last Thursday in Vancouver, British Colombia.
The Canuck had reportedly been storing 72 cans of pop in her truck that she planned to break out at an upcoming company soiree.
Her plans for a soda-filled shindig soon fizzled out after Winnie decided to sate his sugar craving. Rosel was reportedly awoken at 3 a.m. after her dogs started barking, Jam Press reported.
She looked out the window to see that the black bear had smashed her car window and was happily chugging down her massive cache of soft drinks.
Over the next half hour, the Fizzly bear would mainline a diabetes-inducing 69 cans of cola. Think a PG version of the bear’s epic blow binge from the 2022 horror-comedy “Cocaine Bear.”
“He started with the Orange Crush and eventually the last thing he got was the diet pop,” lamented Rosel, adding that the pop pillager had a unique way of accessing the containers.
Instead of opening them with his paws like one would suspect, the furry carjacker reportedly used his teeth like calcified can openers.
The Canadian said she tried to “reason with him,” but couldn’t dissuade him from his fructose-filled rampage.
“I explained to him how important the car was and that I had to go to work the next morning,” she quipped. “That didn’t seem to affect him whatsoever.”
The pop cans weren’t the only things that incurred Winnie’s wrath. According to Rosel, the animal ransacked her car, ripping the leather and breaking a window roller during its impromptu happy hour.
“Of course, white leather interior goes really good with Orange Crush,” snarked the theft victim, who hopes insurance will cover some of the damage.
Rosel explained that the following night the bear returned for seconds, but left empty-pawed
She found the attack particularly surprising as she previously considered herself well-prepped for a bear raid, CBC reported.
Due to her remote surroundings, Rosel said she never left food or trash in her car overnight but thought nothing of soft drinks as she didn’t think the critters “could smell pop through a can.”
However, that’s no problem for a black bear whose sense of smell is about “seven times greater than a bloodhound’s,” per the National Park Service’s website.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Sunshine Coast Bear Alliance notes on its website that bears are adept at infiltrating vehicles.
“[Bears] can be attracted to the slightest aroma in your car, such as a candy wrapper or scented air freshener,” they write. “Please keep your vehicle windows closed and locked and doors locked to avoid damage and a surprise encounter.”
In a boozier version of this story in 2021, a black bear in Colorado got trapped in a car that it had broken into during an apparent attempt to nab a case of beer.
The frustrated critter ended up destroying the interior, presumably out of frustration as it failed to open the box of brew.
