NOTE: The following article contains content that some might find distressing. Please read at your own discretion.
It’s a birthday party these kids won’t soon forget.
A group of visitors at Seattle‘s Woodland Park Zoo looked on as a brown bear dove into a pool and ate several ducklings that had landed in her enclosure last week, giving the spectators a close-up view of the brutality of nature.
The bear, Juniper, is seen in the video taking a keen interest in a mother duck and several of her ducklings who landed in her pool on April 23.
As the children watched, Juniper dove in and devoured the baby birds, one by one, just inches away from the kids peering through the glass.
The woman recording the video, Rachelle, told Storyful she was trying to give her daughter a nice birthday party, but got a bit more than she bargained (or paid) for.
She was “excited to see the bears being so active” but “quickly realized Juniper had a snack in her sight.”
She added that her children were not traumatized by Juniper’s appetite, although she did call the whole incident a “train wreck.”
It’s not the first time a bear in that exact same enclosure pulled the same stunt. A video posted online last year showed a bear snacking on baby ducks in a similar fashion as horrified children screamed on the other side of the glass.
It just goes to show that you can take the bear out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the bear.