Boo the grizzly engineers another great escape

CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, June 27, 2006

GOLDEN - They put him in a cell-like den, behind a massive locked door and three fences. But Boo the bear had a taste of freedom, and he liked what he tasted.

Just a day after his first two-week romp in the wild ended with a tranquilizer dart and a helicopter ride, Boo the orphaned grizzly pulled an even greater escape.

Sometime between 10 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday, the bear smashed his way out of an artificial den at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort near Golden, and headed west into the wild.

"Boo is out again. It's unbelievable," said Michael Dalzell, spokesman for Kicking Horse. "We thought there was no way, it was absolutely impossible, but he found a way. It was basically like breaking out of Fort Knox."

This time, Boo outdid himself, putting to shame his first bid for freedom, when he dug under a fence to link up with a sow. This time, the bear smashed his way through a 180-kilogram steel door, through two electric fences and over a 3.6-metre fence reinforced with 60 centimetres of steel below ground. He knocked the door off its four bolts, then destroyed an electrical box as he forced his way through the two electric fences.

Boo has not been seen since.