It’s not the kind of fight you’d expect to see at a children’s playground, but a brown bear chased an elk into the park and began to attack it as kids and adults watched on in complete shock. The extraordinary incident happened in the northern Sweden town of Hede, and is unlikely to be forgotten any time soon.
The brown bear chased the elk into the middle of a football pitch in the heart of a residential area before catching it and taking it down. According to the newspaper Ostersunds-Posten, three young kids has just left a sandpit right next to the site of the fight minutes before the bear bit down on the helpless elk.
Marianne Bergstrom, a local resident, watched the whole thing unfold from her kitchen window. “The bear caught up with the elk and knocked it to the ground. This happened just about 40 metres from the house. When I went outside it didn’t seem to care and starting gnawing at the poor elk, which was trying to get up,” she told Ostersunds-Posten.
“It was terrible to behold. Fortunately some people came along who were able to put the animal down quite quickly,” she added. Her husband almost hit the animals in mid-chase while driving home.
“It was a full-grown bear. It’s strange that it was this close to the village. We’ve lived here for 34 years and have never heard anything about there being any bears here,” he told Ostersunds-Posten. An approaching car eventually scared the bear back into nearby woods. Authorities in Hede say they won’t hunt down the bear because it was simply behaving naturally.