It only makes sense, I guess. Most animals can swim when the have to. You may not think of a bear taking a dip on a hot day, but it happens.
A couple days ago, a friend was at a local lake, sitting on his dock with his dog, relaxing and enjoying the weather. He suddenly looked up and noticed not far away, along the shore of the lake, there was a bear standing there.
He figured the bear had not noticed he was there. And to this point the dog had noticed nothing, which was probably good. But he thought it might be a good idea to make noise and let the bear know he was there. So he stood up and yelled at the bear.
Bears may be rather large critters, but they really don’t like hanging out with humans. This particular bear had seemed to have all he could put up with from his two legged neighbours, because he just jumped in the lake and started swimming away. Doing a pretty good dog paddle from what I have beard. Although perhaps it should be called the bear paddle in this case.
The bear actually went a fair distance before crawling out of the water where humans were not and wandering off on his way. But I had never thought of bears, other than polar bears, doing a lot of swimming.
You hear stories about them lounging in pools and hot tubs in warmer weather. So why not go for a dip? Makes perfect sense. I just had not considered bear invaders coming by sea.
Or maybe they’ve just heard about shark week and want in on the action.
