Most people would run in the opposite direction of a bear… but not little Juniper Martin.
Her mom Samantha discovered this to her horror this week when she caught her toddler chasing AFTER a bear that had appeared in their back yard.
The unintentionally hilarious and downright adorable video was shared to TikTok… and has already racked up 3.2million views.
The brief clip shows Juniper waddling out the back door of her Redmond, Washington home, as her mom nonchalantly tells her “Juniper, come back inside”… as she has no idea there’s a small black bear perched on her garden wall, just feet from her daughter.
The youngster, however, spots it — and squeals with delight. “That’s a bear!” she exclaims… before tearing down the garden after the animal.
The bear, startled by the bundle of cuteness barreling towards it, takes flight along the wall.
It’s only then does her mom realize what the little girl’s new little friend is, with an “oh shit!” — sprinting out into the garden, scooping her up in her arms, and hastily retreating back into the house.
“There’s a bear outside,” the mom tells someone inside the house, “and she ran right at it!”
“It started running across the fence and she chased it,” Martin told Fox13 of the close call.
“I just panicked. I didn’t really have a lot of thoughts in the moment so much as get the child and get back inside.”
She said the cub had been eating seeds from a bird feeder in the garden, which was now destroyed.
“It was just a little baby bear, but my biggest concern wasn’t necessarily the baby bear so much as I didn’t know where the mom was and didn’t know how she’d feel about two humans running towards her baby,” Martin added.
The mom said Juniper loves reading, and had recently been enjoying an animal identification book… and her favorite animal from it was, of course, a bear.
“I think she was just excited to see something from her book,” she said.
“I did tell her the bear was dangerous and we’ve been watching National Geographic.”
Wildlife experts advise removing food sources such as bird feeders from gardens during the spring, when bears are emerging from hibernation — and hungry.
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