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Woman fends off bear attack in her own garage

Publication: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Knight Ridder Newspapers

Date: 9/24/03

Author: Clint Austin/KNT

DULUTH, Minn. -- Kim Heil-Smith walked into her garage outside Grand

Marais, Minn., one night last week expecting to pull something out of her

car.

Instead, she ended up wrestling a large black bear.

Heil-Smith, who was talking on a cordless phone at the time, opened the

door from her home's entryway into the attached garage about 9:30 p.m.

and found herself face-to-face with a sow and her cub.

"I opened the door and she was right there, between the car and the

side of the house. She didn't have anywhere to go, so she came at me,"

said Heil-Smith, who lives on Devil Track Lake Road north of town.

"I tried to shut the door on her, but she was too strong. She wrapped

her arms around me and I fell back."

The big bear bit her head, shoulder and both thighs.

Heil-Smith suffered multiple puncture wounds and scratches that

required many stitches at Cook County North Shore Hospital, said John Shenett,

Cook County Sheriff's Department deputy.

Heil-Smith, 37, who was home alone at the time of the attack, was

amazingly calm and upbeat when describing the ordeal.

"I was pretty scared at first, I wasn't thinking. Then I just got mad

at this bear being in my house. I finally was able to get my knee up so

she couldn't bite me, and then I grabbed her nose and yelled, 'Get out

of my house!' " she said. "I think that must have startled her because

that's when she left."

She's also amazingly forgiving toward the bear.

"I don't blame her, really; she was just protecting her baby. I don't

think she did it maliciously," Heil-Smith said.

Heil-Smith had been on the phone at the time with her friend, Debby

Nelson. The phone was knocked out of her hand during the attack. But

instead of yelling for help, Heil-Smith was yelling, "It's only a bear" to

avoid scaring her friend."

I didn't want her to think it was a man with a gun or anything,"

Heil-Smith joked.

"She's pretty tough," Scott Smith said of his wife. "It was one mother

against another. I wasn't here when it happened, but I could see the

results when I got home."

After the bear left with its cub, Heil-Smith found the phone and dialed

911. When paramedics arrived, they found her cleaning blood off the

floor.

"I didn't want my daughter to come home from volleyball and see all

that blood," she said. "So they helped me clean it up as they were fixing

me up."

A life-long resident of the Grand Marais, Minn., area, Heil-Smith said

she's not really afraid of the many bears in the area. But she may

check her garage closer next time she heads out.

"I usually close the garage door to keep them out of the garbage and

the sunflower seeds. But I was going out again that night and I didn't

close it this time," she said. "The bear was just helping her cub find

food and I got in her way."

Dave Ingebrigtsen, assistant Department of Natural Resources wildlife

manager in Grand Marais, said this attack sounds "more like a cornered

animal than a problem bear."

There have been very few nuisance calls in the area and no reports of

troublemaking bears.

"It doesn't sound to me like an animal we'd have to track down," he

said.

Dave Garshelis, a DNR bear expert, agrees.

"Generally with black bears, there's no indication that females with

cubs are more dangerous than a single bear. That comes from grizzly

bears," Garshelis said. "Black bears generally aren't aggressive. But when

any animal feels cornered, they'll sometimes act. Not very often, but it

can happen."

The most recent attack in Minnesota occurred last year when an upland

bird researcher was attacked in the Mille Lacs Wildlife Area. Wildlife

experts believe that animal was unusually aggressive and the DNR tried,

but failed, to track it down and destroy it.

Garshelis said black bears will almost always avoid confrontations with

people. If they attack, Garshelis said, general wisdom suggests

fighting back against black bears to ward them off. That's contrary to advice

for grizzly bears, for which experts suggest playing dead.

Minnesota has more than 20,000 black bears.