Black Bear Playing With a Jolly Ball

Occurred on July 3, 0020 / USA

Info from Licensor: "I got a tip from a landowner and an invitation to come over to investigate, and possibly take some images and or video of, whatever had been playing with their horse’s Jolly ball other than their horse. They live deep in the mountains and in the heart of bear territory. So, I told them it could possibly be a bear and or bears as they are very curious and playful. They told me that they do have bears frequent and or cross their property to get to their food sources from time to time and that it could be a good chance it was a bear doing it. Well I waited and waited some more and morning turned into afternoon and still nothing showed up, but finally around 5 to 5:30 in the evening I saw a nice sized, male bear coming into in the area, he was pretty big and looked to be 3 to 5 years old. Could this be the bear that was playing with this ball? He kept coming up the trail closer towards it until he was right at it. He looked up at it, smelled it and bumped it, and then ran down the hill. But, he stopped and came back to it and started smacking and playing with it. I was blessed to witness in person and get this short video of him playing with the ball."