Drunk Bear on the Run After Guzzling Rum Cocktail and Raiding Store

A tipsy Himalayan black bear was caught red-handed raiding a food store after drinking a mixture of rum and other alcohol.

The hungry ursine drank some potent XXX rum mixed with residue of ara, a locally brewed alcohol, in the village of Babesa in Bhutan on January 3. The bear was then spotted tucking into food and salt at a local store.

The bear's activities woke up Ugyen Pelzom at around 2 a.m. local time, who saw the bear inside the store and contacted the local forestry officials.

"It was busy feeding on leftover food and salt which I have kept for my neighbor's cattle shed," she told Kuensel, the national newspaper of Bhutan.

By the time the officials arrived, the bear had already escaped back to the nearby forest.

Himalayan black bears are a subspecies of the Asian black bear found throughout the Himalayas, ranging between India, Bhutan, Nepal, China and Pakistan.

They are considered a "vulnerable" species by the IUCN Red List, mostly due to poaching and the degradation of their natural habitat by humans.

The next day, the hungry bear was back. Upon the suggestion of a neighbor, Pelzom left more rum out in an attempt to get the bear drunk enough that it would stay put until the officials arrived once again.

However, the bear simply drank the rum and departed.

A major factor the leads bear to enter human areas is the abundance of food available to them. They are attracted by the smell of food and alcohol, and therefore make their way into towns and even properties in search of a snack. This can be dangerous for humans, as bears may attack if surprised or threatened, but also dangerous for the bears themselves, as bears that may lose their instinctive fear of humans and therefore be more at risk of death from cars hitting them, poaching and euthanasia in the aftermath of an attack.

Adult bears may also teach their young the behavior of feeding in towns, causing generations of bears to return again and again.

This issue is only worsened by the destruction of the bears' natural habitat, as they are driven closer and closer to human settlements.

"People must take care of food waste if wild animals' were to be avoided," an official from the Department of Forest and Park Services told Kuensel.

The Himalayan black bear's critically endangered cousin, the Himalyan brown bear, has also suffered greatly from being drawn to human food waste. A report by the charity Wildlife SOS found that over three quarters of the diet of Himalayan brown bears in India's Jammu and Kashmir region consists of human garbage, including plastic bags and human food waste.

The rum-drinking black bear bear will be relocated to a safer place if it is eventually captured, with officers having set up camera traps to track its movements.

For now, however, the bear roams the forests, perhaps still a little drunk.

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