A Scottish tourist is thankful to be alive after a close encounter with a wild bear sent her to the emergency room. Moira Gallacher, 72, had been vacationing in Romania with her friend Charmian Widdowson when the women decided to go for a drive through the Carpathian Mountains.
During the outing, the women came across a couple of brown bears and did their best to get a photo of the wildlife.
“What happened was the bear came up to the window at my friend’s side, and no problem. It let us take a picture and went away,” Gallacher said in a video shared by Scottish outlet STV News on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday, April 23. “But I didn’t get a proper picture, so we went back and it was at my side.”
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“We saw these bears – a mummy bear, and a baby – they were gorgeous,” Widdowson said.
“But they weren’t gorgeous. The mummy bear was hungry, and thought my friend was going to be lunch,” she added.
Recounting the moments before the mauling, Widdowson said she parked her car to be able to get a better photo.
“I thought he wanted to be friends,” she said. “The bear came and wanted to get into the car, but he started getting into the car and bit my friend.”