In a shocking incident, a Pennsylvania homeowner was brutally attacked by a mother bear in her backyard.
Lee Ann Galante, 55, was left traumatized after the bear bit her head, leading her to believe she was going to be 'scalped' during the savage assault at her Butler Township residence on Tuesday evening.
The incident unfolded when Galante was accompanying her Pomeranian, Smokie, for an evening stroll in her backyard. She heard a disturbance and immediately sensed danger for her pet. On further inspection, she spotted the silhouettes of three bear cubs in a neighbor's tree, followed by the sudden appearance of their enraged mother.
"I see this big bear just jump over the fence, and there's Smokie. So I start screaming, 'Smokie, Smokie,'" Galante recounted to a local TV news station. The bear, she said, charged at her, knocking her to the ground. "She came up behind me and she pushed me down, and my face went smack right into our cement," she narrated from her hospital bed, her injuries evident with cuts on her nose and above her lip.
The bear then grabbed Galante by the back of her head. "Then she got me by the back of the head and she was pulling so hard on it I thought I was going to get scalped," she added. Galante also mentioned that the bear alternated her attention between her and Smokie, biting her arm during the attack. "She was very very powerful and very very angry," she told CBS News.
Despite the ordeal, Galante and Smokie managed to retreat to their home, where she crawled to a phone and dialed 911. Galante was subsequently hospitalized and received numerous surgical staples to the back of her head. "She has a fair amount of puncture wounds on the back of her neck, on her arm itself and pretty significant tears and lacerations across her scalp. And she also has several broken bones of her nose and her face," said AHN trauma surgeon Dr. Jennifer Chen.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission euthanized the aggressive mother bear, while the cubs were tranquilized and are expected to be released at an undisclosed location. The Commission suggested that the bear was likely being protective of her cubs and was hungry.
Michael Vero, a neighbor, described the incident as 'nerve-wracking,' adding that bears had been spotted in the area for a few weeks, causing concern for his children's safety. "I was on edge then; now that they're out of here, it makes me feel a little better," he said.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission reports that the state's black bear population has surged from approximately 4,000 in the 1970s to around 18,000 today. Black bears, which can weigh up to 600 pounds, are rarely aggressive towards people.
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