I've seen stories of snakes swimming up the pipes and biting people when they're doing their business. I've seen stories of snakes hiding under the toilet seat. I've never heard of a bear attacking someone from the toilet.

On Saturday, Shannon Stevens was going to spend the weekend in an Alaskan yurt with her brother and his girlfriend. They snowmobiled out to the yurt, which had the downside of only having an outhouse.

After dinner, Shannon needed to use the outhouse, so she headed outside.

“Normally, when we are out there in the summer or the fall I’m used to shouting ‘Hey, bear!’ the whole way. It was the dead of winter, so I didn’t think to do that this time,” Stevens said. “I got in there and sat down on the toilet seat, and something just immediately bit me in the butt. I jumped up and screamed.”

She shouted for her brother Erik, who came running.

“I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going to open the lid and look.’ I take the headlamp and I grab the lid of the toilet seat and I lift it up,” Erik Stevens said. “Right at the level of the toilet seat, maybe an inch or two below, is a gigantic bear face looking right back up at me.”

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He closed the lid and the two ran back to the yurt.

Erik thinks the bear was attracted by the smell of the food they were cooking.

“There’s a way out in the back of the outhouse, there’s a rock wall and there’s a way for a creature to get in through that rock wall. He probably just pushed the rocks over and got down into the hole,” Erik Stevens said.

 

It felt like just a single puncture. Maybe it wasn’t even a bite. It might have been a swipe with his claw potentially. I don’t think we’ll ever really know that part,” Shannon Stevens said.

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