Up an electrical pole with nowhere to go… and no one coming to help.
I’m not sure what it is about bears in Arizona and New Mexico climbing up electrical poles, but it’s somewhat of a common occurrence at this point. This time around, a bear once again found itself in a very dangerous situation, as it was stuck high up on an electrical pole next to some live wires. Everyone that came across the bear knew that one wrong move could cause the wild animal to have the life zapped out of it.
Residents and others traveling through the area alerted the authorities, but as you’ll hear in this video, they weren’t exactly rushing to get out and help the bear that was stuck:
Not much they could do, eh? Try telling that to Werner J. Neubauer – lineman who has twice saved bears from similar circumstances in the state of Arizona.
Another passer by, named Robin Dawson, also took a video of the sizable bear hanging out at the top of the telephone pole. They too notified the authorities. But they also didn’t know if there was a safe way to get the wild animal down without harming it. Still, they did what they could to put the videos out there and call for help:
“On the road between Clayton and Springer we ran across this! We notified the authorities, no one had called them! Don’t know how long he’d been there but he’s a BIG BEAR!”
Unfortunately, and unlike the other stories where a lineman came to save the day, it appears that this bear didn’t make it back down to the ground safely.
The same person that shared that above photo and video – Robin Dawson – kept followers updated with the latest on the bear. According to them, the state’s Game & Fish department never made it out to the bear in time, and it unfortunately passed away. Dawson alleges that the authorities blamed the death on people gathering by the pole and spooking the bear.
If that’s how things actually played out, it’s a really bad look for the New Mexico Game & Fish Department:
Certainly a sad situation, and definitely seems like an avoidable one. If the claims that Dawson made are true, it’s a shame that the New Mexico Fish and Wildlife Department didn’t make it out to help this bear get down safely.
