Cyclist crosses the road after chain slips, finds a black bear with a stove pipe on its head

In Oliver, B.C., a mechanical issue with a bike led Curtis Pirie to a startling sight: a young black bear was wandering nearby with a stove pipe stuck over its head.

The unusual scene had already been circulating on local social media and soon became a community emergency.

What happened?

About an hour before Pirie came across the bear, his wife had shown him a social media photo of it. So when a loose chain sent him across the road near Fairview Mountain Golf Course, and he spotted an animal in a fenced orchard, he realized it was the same one, CBC News reported.

"All of the sudden in the corner of my eye I see this animal, walking through an orchard … I had to take a double look because at first I couldn't recognize what it was. But as it got closer I realized, that was the bear my wife was talking about and showed me," he said.

Seeing the yearling pacing with the pipe over its head, Pirie got a neighbor, and the two tried to free the animal before officers arrived.

"We thought if we got on either side of the bear and came sideways maybe we could grab the pipe and pull it off ourselves. Well, that didn't work out too good," Pirie said. 

After that attempt failed, the bear climbed a large tree. According to CBC News, Pirie's wife called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, and he and his neighbor stayed there for more than two hours until officers arrived from Kelowna, sedated the bear, and eventually brought it safely to the ground.

Why does it matter?

While the rescue ended safely, the incident underscored how dangerous these situations can be for both wildlife and people.

Officers had already been hearing about the bear for roughly 10 days, CBC News reported, though the animal evaded them twice before they could intervene.

By the time it reappeared near the golf course, the situation had become more urgent.

"Then all of a sudden last Saturday morning, the bear showed up around the golf course in the Fairview Road area in Oliver, and we got multiple calls coming in about this bear in plain view banging into vehicles, banging into structures," Sgt. James Zucchelli said.

The bear appeared thin, officers said, and they did not know whether it had managed to eat while the pipe was stuck on its head.

"It was definitely drinking. So, it was observed by an irrigation ditch, so it was able to dip its head in water," Zucchelli said.

Despite looking thin, the black bear was still healthy enough to be relocated back into the woods near Oliver.

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