Naked governor risks his life to save birdfeeders from bears
Baku, April 14 (AZERTAC). Vermont governor Peter Shumlin was naked, ready for bed, when he heard a fuss in his backyard one night earlier this week. He looked out to see four bears looting his bird feeders.
His Department of Fish and Wildlife has issued cautions about leaving bird feeders up this time of year, because they can attract bears, and the state also cautions from time to time that bears are dangerous. But the governor is territorial: Shoo! he yelled in his “strongest Vermonter,” as he put it, rushing into the yard and yelling for the interlopers to bug off.
The bears were not amused.
Waiting outside, Shumlin recalled, were two cubs and two adult bears (though Fish and Wildlife officials think there might have been three cubs and a mother).
The governor was not exactly dressed for the encounter.
“Real Vermont boys don`t wear pajamas,” he said — meaning he was naked. He told WDEV radio host Mark Johnson he was wearing as much as the bears were.
The bears had given the hollering, naked governor a bit of deference, enough so that Shumlin went outside to retrieve the bird feeders, he said, so the bears wouldn`t return for the food. But as the governor started to carry two of the feeders inside, the bears came back.
Shumlin again used his strongest Vermonter to scare the animals off; they ran to the edge of the yard.
He went back outside to get the other two feeders. The bears appeared unhappy to have their food source taken away. This was especially true of the largest bear, Shumlin said. “He just booked it for the porch,” Shumlin recalled.
The governor took the two feeders and made a beeline for his door, with what Shumlin called the papa bear in hot pursuit.
“When I opened the door, he was on the porch and five feet from the door,” Shumlin said. “I screamed through that door. I didn`t know if the bear was coming through.”
Vermont Fish and Wildlife Chief Warden Col. David LeCours said the four bears Shumlin saw might have actually been three cubs and a sow, with no papa bear involved. The sow might have been aggressive because it perceived the governor as a threat to her cubs.
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