First thing's first, this did not happen in Florida.
Instead, we are taking a trip to beautiful Poland for today's bit of bonkers news.
A 23-year-old man is facing some hefty fines as well as a painfully-learned lesson in sobriety after drunkenly picking a fight with a bear at a zoo.
Yeah.
You read that correctly.
The man faces fines (that could go upwards of seven thousand dollars) and other punishments after the zoo incident, which was caught on camera by other guests of the Polish park. That video, which some have described as truly surreal, is making rounds on social media.
The video starts with the man standing on some stones with a large brown bear a few feet away from him. He appears to be wringing out his clothing.
The bear makes a half-hearted charge towards him and he takes a few steps forward before jumping into the safety moat around the animal's enclosure. Presumably this is how the man got into the bear's enclosure in the first place. An old man and young boy casually watch because, like we said, surreal.
That's way beyond the barrier, sir.
@wnuckers / Twitter
The bear seems confused (or maybe impressed?) by this and watches as the man splashes around in the water. Eventually, he makes it to an area near a landing that the bears use to enter and exit the water.
Bear watches intently from above the man's head.
@wnuckers / Twitter
Until...
@wnuckers / Twitter
This is the point where things could go REALLY wrong. Unarmed humans realistically stand little-to-no chance against a brown bear on land.
They stand even less of a chance in water.
When the bear dives in, she miraculously swims right past the man! Or at least she tries to.
She almost brushes by him before the man spins himself around, grabs the animal by her fur and starts fighting with the bear. The bear, honestly, does a whole lot of nothing in return except seem a bit confused and agitated.
He hits, pushes and grapples with her and at one point even shoves and holds the bear's head under the water.
The bear just sort of ... floats there?
It looks as if the bear is trying to get away from him rather than what you'd expect which would be a human trying their darndest to GTFO.
Not this guy.
They say the universe takes pity on the foolish, and this man is certainly a case for that old saying. He and the bear eventually just let one another go.
She never fights back. She never even growls. She just swims away.
The man climbs onto the rock formation on an artificial island within the enclosure.
Zoo officials are able to lead the bear away and the man is rescued.
We mentioned fools finding favor before, and as luck would have it the bear on exhibit that day happened to be 39-year-old Sabina. Sabina happens to be an elderly retired circus bear who is quite used to people.
Zoo spokeswoman Anna Karczewska made it very clear that Sabina would have been very capable of seriously injuring him had she chosen to, but she was not the aggressor here. She was the victim. She drove the point home further by calling the incident "a human attack."
Evidently, this bear has a history of being attacked by humans and found this incident quite traumatizing. She hid for hours afterwards.
We're not going to lie, attacking a bear in general looks pretty bad. But the possibility that this dude just jumped in there and attacked a scared old granny-bear with PTSD just makes it so much worse.
Yeah, this guy's not popular right now.
The court of public opinion isn't the only place this guy is totally losing.
He was charged with animal cruelty and disturbing the peace. Authorities also hit him with a fine for not wearing a face mask under the country's pandemic response guidelines.
He was sentenced to community service by the courts and still faces substantial fines. He has also given up alcohol.
The zoo has decided this is the proverbial nail in the coffin for this particular enclosure, which is sometimes used as a sort of live-billboard for the zoo. As such, it is not actually inside of the zoo.
It's on public ground about a half mile outside the gates.
The enclosure, meant to attract the public, unfortunately has done it's job too well and has been the scene of numerous "break-ins" by humans. Zoo officials had planned to move the bears away from that area and close it up anyway, but have made that move sooner rather than later.
