Even bears can’t resist the lazy luxury of kotatsu, apparently.
After a remarkably warm autumn, winter has come in full force to much of northern and eastern Japan. This past Monday, the town of Kitakata, Fukushima Prefecture, was blanketed in snow, making it exactly the kind of weather in which a lot of people would be perfectly happy to spend the day inside their warm, cozy living rooms.
That idea was also pretty appealing to a bear, who decided to let himself into a local resident’s home and park himself at the kotatsu, a type of low table with a heater attached to its underside, and hang out there until the house’s human owner discovered he had a visitor.
▼ Please enjoy this adorable CG reenactment of the incident.
The owner of the house, a man in his 60s, had gone out earlier in the day, around 11:30 a.m. It’s not clear how the bear gained access to the house, but when the man returned home at approximately 6:20 in the evening and slid open the door to his living room, he was presented with the sight of a bear’s bottom protruding from his kotatsu as the animal warmed its head underneath the table, and in no visible hurry to come out of the appealing pocket of warmth.
Though the opposite of the feet-first entry style favored by human users, this attitude of “Once I’m in the kotatsu, I’m not coming out for a loooong time,” is very relatable, since even if the heater isn’t turned on, kotatsu are usually outfitted with a quilted blanket that traps warmth underneath the table.
▼ Please enjoy yet another adorable CG reenactment of the incident.
Relatable or not, though, an uninvited guest is always cause for concern, and even more so when said guest is also an apex predator, so the man quickly moved to a neighbor’s house, where they contacted the local hunting association, telling them “There’s a bear in the living room.” The hunting association in turn contacted the police to discuss how to proceed.
While this was going on, the owner of the house went back to check on the situation at around 8 p.m. Sure enough, the bear was still there, and had now begun eating some of the food that had been left on the table.
▼ Keeping a bowl of snacks, such as rice crackers or mandarin oranges, on the kotatsu is also standard practice for humans in Japan, so that you won’t have to leave the warmth to go grab some munchies when you get hungry.
While bears and other potentially harmful animals are often culled when they come this far into human spaces in Japan, in this case a non-lethal response was carried out. The man’s neighbors were cautioned about the bear’s presence and urged to evacuate, and on the following day, with the animal having spent the night in the house, the hunting association began setting off firecrackers to scare the bear out of the building. When it then fled and hid in another resident’s storage shed, hunters shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart at roughly 3;30 in the afternoon, and after confirming that it was incapacitated, the bear was transported to a deeper area of the mountains, farther away from human homes.
The getting tranquilized and forcibly relocated parts notwithstanding, the bear’s plan for how to spend a cold winter’s day matches up pretty closely with a lot of people’s aspirations, prompting online comments such as:
“This really shows how amazing kotatsu are.”
“Even bears have no chance of escaping the temptation of kotatsu!”
“Was it going to just hibernate there until the spring?”
“Bear: ‘Oh, hey, human. Come on in and relax.’”
“Kotatsu don’t just make people lazy, they do the same for bears.”
“Real-world Rilakkuma.”
“I’m glad the bear didn’t smash up the guy’s house.”
“With all apologies to the house’s owner, when I heard about this I couldn’t help busting up laughing.”
“It’s cute to imagine, but if this was actually happening to you, it’d be terrifying.”
It remains unclear exactly what caused the bear to enter the home and camp out in the kotatsu. At approximately 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) in length, it’s most likely a relatively young bear, and one of the hunters who was interviewed in the above videos says that it looked, to him, undernourished, so he wonders if the animal was having trouble with its hibernation preparations. However, Kiyoshi Yamauchi, an associate professor and researcher of animal ecology at Iwate University, says that there has been an abundance of food for bears to consume this year in their habitats in and around Kitakata, and that can actually delay the start of hibernation, since bears’ instincts connect food becoming scarce with the onset of winter and take it as a signal that “OK, probably time to start hibernating.” Yamauchi also says that bears ordinarily wouldn’t be so close to human communities this late in winter, but that the kotatsu bear may have become accustomed to close proximity with people, possibly having found unsecured food sources that make the area attractive as it prepares to hibernate.
As silly and cute as parts of the story are, though, it’s important to remember that bears can be extremely dangerous, especially when preparing to enter or coming out of hibernation, when they’re generally going to try to eat everything they can. And again, while this bear was simply tranquilized and moved, it’s very common for bears to be culled in Japan if there’s a fear that they could return to human spaces and cause injuries to residents, so for their sake and yours, please don’t issue an open invitation to any bears to come hang out in your house for the winter.
Source: Asahi Shimbun, Nitele News, YouTube/ANNnewsCH, YouTube/日テレNEWS
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2)
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