There has already been a Predator Watch column about a bear attacking a teen at home. Back in July, I wrote about a black bear mauling 19-year-old Kevin Wood through the window screen of his bedroom in San Bernardino, Calif. His mom described the horror she witnessed when her son came out of his room early in the morning: “I see him and his face is just covered with blood. I could see his lip was entirely split.”
This week's incident also involved a teenager in her room and took place in the early morning, but in Colorado, which will come as no surprise to readers of this column, as I've already reported that a record number of Coloradans have had encounters with bears in 2026.
A bear entered the bedroom of a 17-year-old girl in the city of Durango early Sunday morning by using an outdoor couch to climb up to the window and rip off the screen. It then managed to force open the window that had been left partially open before tearing away the curtain. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) says that as the girl tried to hide under her blankets, the bear slashed at her stomach.
As you can imagine, the girl was screaming, causing the bear to exit through the window. But how many times have we seen a wild animal return in Predator Watch stories after things appear calm? Indeed, according to CPW, the bear immediately came back in through the window. This time, the girl stood up and screamed, prompting the bear to leave for good.
It turns out that the many blankets the girl pulled over her protected her from serious injuries; CPW says she only sustained scratches and bruising.
Related: Predator Watch: Bear Attacks Hit Historic Levels in This State
CPW officials said the bear, which they are still attempting to locate, broke into another home Monday morning. Here's video from last year of police responding to a report of a bear entering a home in Durango:
Just days before the attack on the 17-year-old girl, a black bear sank its teeth into the arm of Kathleen Baran, a solo camper who was asleep in her tent in Colorado. The Colorado Sun reports that Baran initially thought she was being bitten by a wolf when she was "startled awake by the grip of sharp teeth through tent fabric" on her right arm. After she managed to punch the bear with her left arm, it growled and released its grip.
Baran received treatment for puncture wounds at a hospital and fortunately had no broken bones. She never saw the bear and continued to believe it was a wolf until wildlife officials later showed her claw marks on the tent and footprints nearby, confirming that the animal was a bear.
The lead-up to the attack was probably the creepiest aspect of the incident, especially when you remember that Baran was camping alone:
Before going to sleep, she heard a crackle she now believes was the bear “testing” the other side of the tent with a swipe, but she thought at the time it was a branch falling or a skunk snorting around the fire ring.
She used her key fob to “flash the car on and off to make noise and to flash lights, and then I went to bed. And then next thing you know, I’m woken up by the tent crashing in on me, and I don’t know what it is, but it’s him jumping on the tent.” A weak light from her phone illuminated the chaos just a bit.
“There’s claw marks on the tent there, which helps wake me up, from a dead sleep. What the hell? And this feeling of absolute dread because I know something’s going down. And then I wonder, is it a human? Is it an animal? And what’s my next move? What’s theirs?”
A final story this week involving a woman asleep during a bear attack unfortunately had a much more tragic ending.
A brown bear killed a 66-year-old mother of eight in the remote Siberian village of Verkhny Kebezh. The Sun reports that the bear dragged her from her bed while her friend slept in the same room. Her mauled body was found more than 50 feet from the wooden house. Hunters shot and killed the bear when it returned to the scene the following day.
While there have been 10 bear attacks on people in Colorado this year, none have been fatal. Meanwhile, bears have killed at least five people in Siberia in just the last month.
