Like bears aren’t already dangerous enough.
The black bear is basically the mascot of the Great Smoky Mountains. If you’ve ever visited there, you probably saw little black bear statues and decorations all over your cabin. If you haven’t been yet but plan on going (you should go), prepare yourself to see more black bear decor than you thought was possible.
Millions of people visit Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park every year, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It’s estimated that 13.3 million tourists travel to the national park per year, making it the most visited national park in the country (more than triple times the amount than the second-most-visited, the Grand Canyon). Keep that fun fact in your back pocket for trivia night.
Then you’ve also got residents of Gatlinburg that have to deal with a) the tourists and b) the black bears year round. The popular vacation spot is undoubtedly in bear country, and those that live there know they have to be prepared for runs in with the wild animals from time to time… and the bears trying to steal their garbage.
However, residents probably never think about a bear stealing their power tools. They might want to be more cognizant of that now, considering a Gatlinburg-area man caught a black bear on camera walking off with his brand new chainsaw. The security camera footage is currently going viral on social media, and the man explained that he only thought to check his cameras because he couldn’t find the power tool he had left on his front porch:
“Well wasn’t this just a great way to wake up this morning. Went looking for my brand new chainsaw that I left on front porch last night. Never gonna find that thing again. This means war!”
Consider the bear to be armed and dangerous.
That wasn’t the end of the story though. Evidently, the guy went walking up into the woods looking for his chainsaw, and hoping that the bear dropped it somewhere close by. Sure enough, he tracked it down… but he didn’t love where the bear had left it:
“Found my chainsaw! But Houston, we may have a problem. Found his den as well. I don’t feel my heart racing 100 mph very often, but this would be one of those times. Walked back to cabin to do a shot or two of vodka and plot how this goes down. There’s a bear that’s been lurking with 3 cubs and that’s not a fight I want over a chainsaw. May see if I can get a rope and lasso it and pull it off that bank.”
Like something out of a movie, am I right?
Some even speculated online that the video and picture could be generated by artificial intelligence. After all, AI has gotten pretty good at fooling people on the internet… especially when it comes to outdoors videos. The X user responded to that speculation with raw footage from his Ring camera.
It certainly seems like this is real (or a bang-up job at pulling the wool over the eyes of those on social media):
“No, not AI. Here’s full Ring sequence. Apparently, as I watched it again, there were two bears… about to fight. They’re super aggressive right now (hungry, hibernate soon and females with cubs). At the 2:33:20 mark, you can see the other bear appear at bottom. 2:37 – bye bye saw.”
So for those in bear country… while you are securing your garbage cans, maybe double check that your power tools are neatly and securely put away. You apparently can’t rule out bears walking off with chainsaws in 2025 and beyond. As long as they don’t figure out how to use them, I think we’ll be okay.
