Up an electrical pole with nowhere to go.
I’m not sure what it is about bears in Arizona climbing up electrical poles, but it’s somewhat of a common occurrence at this point. The funniest part about this most recent example? The lineman that came to save this bear in 2025 – Werner J. Neubauer – was the same person who saved a bear in the exact same situation in 2021.
Only that time four years ago, the bear up the utility pole was a little bit more stuck than this one.
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 a transformer and some live wires. One wrong move and the wild animal could have had the life zapped out of it. That’s why officials acted fast when they found out the bear was in trouble.
It’s a strange sight to see a bear climbing a power poles. One could argue that it’s even stranger to see the large beasts get stuck and need assistance. So this footage, which was apparently captured by Neubauer’s wife, has caught the eye of the social media world. In other words, it’s gone viral.
The first thing Neubauer did (since he’s somewhat of a bear-electrical-pole expert at this point) was to de-energize the equipment that set atop this particular pole. He wasn’t sure why this bear ended up at the top of the electric pole, but he presumed it had become spooked, or it was possibly chased up it. All that Neubauer was really sure of was that he was going to get this bear back down on the ground, safe and sound.
The lineman, who used a box truck to lift himself up to eye level with the animal, was eventually able to convince the bear climb back down on its own (after some justified prodding with a fiberglass stick). I don’t know if you’ve ever seen videos of officials trying to get bears out of high places, but it doesn’t always work out smoothly for the wild animal (just watch this bear get launched by a trampoline).
This scenario worked out just fine, as the bear shimmied down the pole on it’s own and ran off. But not before it gave Neubauer and his wife a scare. It actually ran right towards the truck that Neubauer’s significant other was standing on, which forced both them to get their “bear-deterrent-voices” out.
And funny enough, the confused and scared bear sought out refuge on… another nearby electrical pole for a minute. The lineman probably thought he was going to have to move the bucket truck and do it all over again. Thankfully, the bear jumped down after a couple of seconds and run off into the distance.
In terms of bear rescue videos, it was very eventful:
“POWER STRUGGLE: A lineman successfully coaxed a bear off a utility pole in Arizona after it risked being electrocuted. The animal eventually dropped from the pole and ran off unharmed.”
