That sounds like the start of some lame joke right? But actually it's not. Earlier this week, a young black bear walked into a grocery store in Peace River, Alberta, right through the automatic doors and headed directly for the pastries. The bear apparently had a thing for strawberry pastries/pies and ate somewhere in the realm of 10 pies before having his (or her) fill. The people in the store were eventually able to coax the bear out, no problem at all. Except for one idiot that decided to snap pictures with his camera phone and got too close. What makes you think you should be sticking a camera phone, or anything for that matter, in the face of a bear? Well, as one can imagine, the bear bit the man, but barely injured him (I believe it was a light hand injury). And now, since the bear has hurt someone it has to, by law, be killed. Authorities have setup a trap outside the grocery store in the hopes of catching the bear, at which point they kill it. I think that's lame. Bears can be dangerous, no question, and if a bear goes on a rampage in the wilderness, well, it probably needs to be put down, but this little fella just wanted a snack, and until some obnoxious picture-taker decided to get in the bear's face, the bear was relatively harmless (although I'm sure the people in the store were scared). So the bear needed a sugar fix? The way humans encroach on wildlife, you'd think the laws could be a bit more flexible for circumstances like this...one can only hope they don't catch the bear and the bear stays away (yes, I'm sure the pies were good little bear, but they ain't worth dying over). As for the guy snapping shots with his camera phone, you could have probably done it from a bit further away without disturbing the bear. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should*. And, when it comes to wild animals, respect 'em, cause they're usually tougher and more dangerous than we are (unless we've got guns, trucks, or other animal-killing accessories.) I could only find a short version of the story here, but it makes no mention of the dufus with the camera. (Technorati Tags: peace river, black bear, camera phones)