At 10:17 a.m. Thursday morning, the Anchorage Police Department got a call that a woman was chasing a black bear through East Anchorage. All in a day's work, the dispatcher might have thought.
It turns out the bear jumped a fence in order to snatch a pet rabbit in its teeth, according to an APD press release. This was no ordinary rabbit. "George" was well known in the neighborhood because his back legs were paralyzed and he used a two-wheeled cart to get himself around.
So when his owner, who was planning on using George as a therapy animal, saw him in the bear's mouth, she dropped what she was doing and took off, barefoot, after the bear. She chased the bear across several of her neighbor's yards and down an alley. At that point, the bear decided it had had enough and whirled around to confront her. After a quick faceoff, the bear left the area with the rabbit.
The person who called in the chase told police the bear had been a problem in the area for some time, tearing into garbage and making a nuisance of itself, and that residents were concerned for their children's safety.
At this point, George is presumed deceased.
Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.