Enterprise, N.W.T., man scares off black bear with pillow

A cabin owner near Enterprise had a scare last week when a bear came right up to his window in the middle of the night.

Russel Chase says he heard a noise outside his cabin late last week. At first, he thought it was squirrels but when he got out of bed he saw a black bear about four feet away. The bear was on his deck looking in the window.

Chase used an unlikely object to scare the bear away: a pillow. 

"When I looked up, it was the only thing around there," he said. "I didn't really throw the pillow. I kind of went up to the window and waved the pillow at him. It did the job but there's probably better things to use."

Chase says he had to chase the bear off another three times that night. He's unsure of what attracted it, though he says it was the first day he had chosen to cook food at the cabin.

Chase says he never thought a pillow could be an effective defense against a bear, and that since the incident, he's sleeping with his shotgun a little bit closer.