Construction Workers Help A Bear Out Of A Trapped Hole

It’s high drama in Turkey! A work crew with a large backhoe comes to the rescue of a trapped brown bear. They modify a backhoe with a hydraulic hammer, using it to chisel into solid rock to widen the opening so the bear can escape. How on earth did the bear get into the cavernous space it couldn’t get out of? We would all want to know the answer to that question. Was there a cave in or landslide? Let’s see how the heroes make out.

On a first glance the setting looks like a stone quarry, with a cave at the bottom of a ravine. Bears may have been using this cave since time immemorial for shelter, but maybe the activities of human had something to do with its predicament. Perhaps digging or blasting in the quarry caused a landslide or cave in. Is it possible our heroes are just fixing the mess they made in the first place? The bear has a distinct disadvantage in this case, trapped, and the people have the high ground. At first it looks like the noisy hydraulic hammer is simply trying to taunt the unfortunate bruin, but then we notice that the mouth of the cave is solid rock, so of course the rescuers must force it open with high powered machinery. That solid rock is in fact a concrete slab from a septic tank on a farm in Turkey. The bear didn’t particularly hibernate in it, it actually fell inside the tank after chasing chickens.

The bear has understandably become defensive; probably thinking it’s do or die time. We rarely see bears in full battle mode, but this is really happening, and is a one of a kind camera opportunity. It was a good thing no people were in the tight space between thebear and the hammer, because things could have gotten ugly very quickly. The bear was literally cornered, aggressively lunging at the hydraulic chisel in a posture we rarely see bears in. A far cry from the carefree Baloo of “Jungle Book” fame.

If it wasn’t for the presence of the machine, similar conflicts might have played out 100,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, except that the rescue team might have been a prehistoric hunting party. Jean Auel wrote the popular “Clan of the Cave Bear,” in which a party of Neanderthal hunted and killed a giant bear living in a cave. In her story, the cavemen did not claim victory without suffering the loss of one of their own to the cornered behemoth. In those days it would have been a life or death matter, where only man or beast would have survived, but not both. Thankfully we have advanced beyond those days, and although our bear friend could not divine the benevolent intent of this violent intrusion on its privacy, maybe it will have time to rethink what the people did for it after a quiet night’s sleep.

We have to give credit where credit is due, and thank the construction workers for valuing their wildlife. Maybe where a few righteous souls still care for the life of a single trapped bear, even one that bites the “hand” that rescued it, there is hope for our shrinking natural world. Also to be considered is whether the bear will pass on its experience to its offspring. Will its descendants look kindly upon people hereafter, or will the legend among the cave bear continue to view the human kind with suspicion and vengeance?