‘That ain’t no dog’: Family saves bear cub with plastic tub stuck on its head

Silly old bear.

After a day of fishing on Marsh-Miller Lake on Saturday, a Wisconsin family was heading home when they spotted something strange in the water.

At first, they thought it could be a rock. Then, a dog. But on closer inspection, the Hurt family realized it was a bear cub with a plastic tub stuck on its head.

“I said, ‘That ain’t no dog. I think that’s a bear,'” Tricia Hurt told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We got closer and I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a bear that got hungry and got its head stuck in a bucket.”

In a video Hurt, 52, shared to her Facebook page, the poor bear can be seen barely afloat with his head stuck inside the tub, that was filling with water.

The fishing family circles the bear a few times to get closer, before Brian Hurt, 52, manages to get his hands around the tub and pops it off of the animal’s head.

“Never dreamt we would ever do this in our lifetime,” the caption reads. “Out on Marsh-Miller Lake yesterday with Brian Hurt and Brady Hurt when we spotted this poor bear.”

“He made it to shore after all that.”

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The family later learned that the same bear cub had been spotted in the area a few times over the last week, they told the Sentinel. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was looking for it.

“We just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” she said.

“We honestly believe if we hadn’t run into that bear, it wouldn’t have made it to shore,” Hurt said. “It was so disoriented, it didn’t know where shore was and it was so tired.”

The incredible footage has since garnered one million views, more than 9,300 reactions and nearly 2,000 comments.

“You are heroes,” one Facebook user commented. “Thank you for saving this poor bear.”

Another wrote: “You did a great thing … Kindness with action is everything.”

As the bear swam off to shore at the end of the footage, Hurt can be heard exclaiming: “Swim happy.”

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meaghan.wray@globalnews.ca