Babysitter shoots bear near Porthill

By ROBERT JAMES

Managing Editor

Quick thinking by a babysitter kept three children from possible harm near Porthill early last week when a black bear reportedly weighing 422 pounds barreled out of the woods and into a backyard where the children were playing.

The babysitter was watching her sister's twin two-year-old boys, Cleo and Charles, and her three-year-old girl, Brooklyn, in the backyard. She heard Brooklyn screaming "Bear, bear!" Brooklyn's mother, Becky Henslee said.

When her sister looked, she saw the bear running down a path out of the woods and into the backyard. She snatched up the three children and sprinted for the house.

The four got to the house, which had a sliding glass door. The babysitter, who is still too shaken up by the incident to talk about it and does not want to be identified, got the kids inside and turned to close the door. The bear was right there.

It began pawing at the door. It damaged the screen door and the window frame. Cleo, Charles and Brooklyn quickly were ushered into a back bedroom and their mother's sister grabbed a rifle.

She went back to the door and watched as the bear stood up and began pounding on the glass.

Brooklyn remembers hearing the thump-thump as the bear hit the door, Henslee said.

Her sister loaded the rifle and waited. The bear became distracted for a moment by something at its feet and it looked down. Using that as her chance, the babysitter slid the door open a foot and shot twice from the hip at the bear just three feet away.

The bear dropped dead on the step.

Henslee shudders when she thinks about what might have happened if Brooklyn hadn't sounded the alarm and if her sister hadn't acted so quickly.

The bear apparently had been rooting around the property for a little while. Henslee found the hot-wire around her horse pen broken.

An encounter as serious as this one is rare in Idaho, Greg Johnson, a conservation officer with Idaho Fish and Game, said.

"We've not had a single incident in Idaho of a black bear attacking a person," he said.

This has been a bad year for bear encounters, however, as the bears search for food. A bad berry crop this year has forced the bears to scrounge more for food, Johnson said. Apparently, there was a barbeque grill on the porch at the house, and that is probably the reason the bear was up on the porch of the house, Johnson said.

Bears will take advantage of easy food sources, Johnson said.

"If you have a bear, you probably have food out,' he said.

The woman who shot the bear had a tag for bear.