Just a week after surviving a horrific encounter with a black bear, Coquitlam, B.C., resident Katy Yin spoke about her experience for the first time Tuesday.
Yin has been recovering in hospital from injuries to her head, arms and back since being mauled in the garden of her home last Wednesday.
Yin says she was viciously tossed around by the bear until neighbours came to help.
"I could hear him choke, tear my head. All the skin part in my arms, the whole muscle here,'' she told the Globe and Mail in an interview. "And he kind of threw me upside down and broke my ribs."
Yin credits a stranger for saving her life. A man used his SUV to hit the bear, which then ran off.
"I could not do anything,'' she said. "All I could do is just scream as hard as I can."
When Yin realized that the bear wasn't going to give up, she used all her strength to call a neighbour.
Yin remains in Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. The bear that attacked her was shot and killed by police.
Meanwhile, on Monday, a bear wandered into Mount Seymour in North Vancouver and stayed long enough to be captured on home video, climbing out of a parked truck and crawling through the window to get some garbage.
"He ended up pawing it open and made himself dinner," said a Mount Seymour resident, who witnessed the incident.
The bear eventually leaped out and took off.
Conservation officer Jack Trudgian says sightings are up this summer. He says more bears may be leaving the woods because the weather may have killed off some of their food supply.
"This cold spring means bears hibernated longer, and when they did wake up, a lot of the berries had died," he said.
Tony Webb with the North Shore Black Bear network admits it's unusual for bears to go to the length of climbing into a vehicle to search for food. But he says their attraction to garbage is incredibly strong.
"A bear knows that it is going to get more food energy from human garbage than it will from berries and dandelion leaves,'' he said.
"We have to contain our garbage so it will not attract bears."
With reports by The Globe and Mail and CTV British Columbia's Maria Weisgarber
