Problems for humans and problems for animals are wildly different. About 80% of adult humans will experience back pain at some point in their lives, but they don’t — hopefully — have to worry about getting their heads stuck in food containers when they’re hungry. Emphasis on hopefully.
One black bear cub wasn’t so fortunate. Uncleverly dubbed Buckethead, this bear got a very Winne-the-Pooh-esque rumbly in his tumbly and needed something to eat. Bears are renowned for their ability to get into all sorts of shenanigans in search of food and Buckethead, a 100-pound cub, was no exception.
He happened across a container of food. By the looks of the container, it was junk food like cheeseballs. He started snacking from the container, but as the snack level got lower, he put his head further in the container and it got stuck. The best part is that the bear cub ignored the fact that he was stuck until after finishing the entire container of cheeseballs. Then he couldn’t get the container off his head.
It is a clear container, so he could still see and apparently breathe well enough to traipse around the forest with his mom and sibling for three days before Rangers from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources came to his aid. After video footage of the be-jugged cub came to the Rangers, they knew that they didn’t remove the container from the cub’s head soon, it would die of a combination of dehydration and starvation.
Over the course of three days, they tracked the cub and were finally able to tranquilize him, remove the jug from his head, then return him to the forest where his family awaited.
“Wildlife and Heritage Service response staff tracked this bear cub for three days and, with assistance from the Maryland Natural Resources Police, were able to rescue this 100 lb male cub from the bucket that covered his head,” the department posted on Facebook with pictures of a tranquilized Buckethead being removed from his bucket.
Far from being the first bear to get stuck in everything from sewer manholes, dumpsters, garbage bins, and milk canisters, as long as there is food in tight quarters, bears are going to keep getting stuck.
