A B.C. woman is reminding people to always keep an eye on their surroundings after a too-close-for-comfort wildlife encounter.
Melanie Porter was sitting in her backyard in Quesnel on Thursday browsing TikTok when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
What she thought at first was a cat turned out, in fact, to be a bear.
“It was just so surreal. I’m not an outdoorsy kind of girl, never been around any bears,” she said.
“It was just sheer panic, so I froze. It was like an adrenaline rush, holy Hannah what do I do.”
As Porter froze, the bear approached her from the side. It then did something she said she’ll never forget.
“It sniffed, and then decided to take a lick of my right hand,” she said.
“And then he went in for a second lick and his mouth was more open, and I was like, ‘Nope,’ so I pulled it back and he decided to kind of back up. I must have startled him.”
As the bear backed off, Porter managed to snap a quick photo with her phone that was still open, before she and the bear retreated from each other.
What does a bear’s tongue feel like?
“It just feels like a dog tongue, not like a cat,” she said. “Basically a gigantic dog tongue, like a Newfoundland Labrador.”
Porter said she did not call conservation officers out of fear the bear could be killed, adding that bear traffic in her neighbourhood is not unusual, even though residents are diligent about locking up their trash.
She said she initially believed the bear was a grizzly, but that hunter friends told her it was a black bear, based on its claws.