Grizzly vs. Toyota Sequoia

Car jacking is a real threat.  You don’t want to walk away from your vehicle, unlocked, keys within.   It is best to lock the door and take your keys lest you have an unwanted visitor.

That said, here is a piece going around the interwebs about an attempted, foiled car jacking.

Grizzly vs. Toyota Sequoia

Grizzly Gets Locked In Toyota Sequoia SUV Near Waterton.
There are no scratches on the outside, but the vehicle is totaled.

Last Monday morning he came out to find the inside of his 18 month old Toyota Sequoia trashed. A grizzly bear had somehow got a door open (easy considering the way the handles are) and once inside got trapped when the door shut behind him. Probably the wind. The Toyota was a platinum edition, all the door panels were ripped off, the headliner torn to pieces, all headrests, the leather seats, the dash shredded. The steering column was twisted sideways. Two of the six airbags went off, the other four the bear ripped to pieces. You can imagine a trapped grizzly being hit with an airbag in an enclosed space must have figured he was in for the fight of his life. When the bear ripped off the door panels he clawed all the wiring harnesses out. Toyota figures every wire he pulled or clawed at resulted in bells, voices or sparks. The head mechanic at Calgary Toyota doubted if they had the expertise to put it back together. To add insult to injury the bear took a big dump in the back of the SUV and then broke out the rear window.

Fish and wildlife officers have inspected the damage and figure it was a 3 year old grizzly.
From blood left behind they are doing DNA. The vehicle has been written off, cost new over $70,000 they stopped counting repair costs at $60,000.

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About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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20 Comments

  1. Maynardus says:

    …and I thought my kids were hard on the interior of a car…

  2. The Masked Chicken says:

    So, in other words, the outside of the car was barely scratched, but it wasn’t bearly scratched. English must be a really difficult language to listen to for some foreigners. Of course, this would never happen in Latin (not to mention that there is no word for car). This is why driving should be left to humans and other flightless fowl, like chickens.

    The Chicken

    Fr. Z's Gold Star Award

  3. VexillaRegis says:

    Poor bear, he or she must have been severely traumatised in that car.
    It reminds me of St Corbinian’s Bear!
    from the Wikipedia:
    “Corbinian’s symbol is the saddled bear. According to his hagiography, a bear killed Corbinian’s pack horse on the way to Rome and so the saint commanded it to carry his load. Once he arrived in Rome, however, he let the bear go, and it lumbered back to its native forest.” That bear at least got a proper blowout from the “vehicle”. The grizzly not so much.

    http://catholicsaints.info/saint-corbinian/

  4. Mary Jane says:

    Maynardus, HAHA! LOL!

  5. DeGaulle says:

    I could hardly bear to read this. Still, it could have had a more grisly end.

  6. TimG says:

    I would pay to see a video of that event (as opposed to some of the trash coming out of Hollywood.) Maybe we can get Mark “The Hulk” Ruffalo to take the bear on in a sequel?

  7. Boniface says:

    Fr Z, as a past recipient of a Gold Star of the Day myself (BTW, where’s the mug for that?), and as a lover of puns, I would like to humbly nominate DeGaulle for the award based on the above.

    And if you ever make a Gold Star of the Day recipient mug, I’ll n-urs-e ;) some coffee in it while rereading this post.

    [You worked really hard on that unbearable pun, didn’t you.]

  8. Semper Gumby says:

    …this isn’t so bad…I thought it’d be alot worse than that. That’ll buff right out no problem.

    -John Candy in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

    Boniface has a point on DeGaulle’s comment- I had to paws while reading it.

    Chicken: Eamus Catuli! (Had to work that in.)

    Ok, I’ll stop now. My puns are getting wursa and wursa.

    …One more.

    Vexilla Regis: Corbinian’s bear had to grin-and-bear-it.

  9. VexillaRegis says:

    Semper, LOL! And then St Corbinian said unto the beast (Grizelda?): Please bear with me!

  10. Cafea Fruor says:

    I sure hope this guy’s car insurance company doesn’t say there’s some…claws…that prevents coverage for this. That would be…unbearable.

    [claws… pretty good]

  11. Who says Catholics have no sense of humor? Thanks for these, I needed a smile!

  12. Animadversor says:

    Who says Catholics have no sense of humor?

    Well, Chiara, we pretty much couldn’t manage without one.

  13. Grumpy Beggar says:

    I thought I recall reading that the Toyota Sequoia was parked just outside the maul. . .

  14. Grumpy Beggar says:

    . . . and that someone had actually misled the bear into believing that particular Sequoia belonged to a certain journalist from Fishwrap and then proceeded to lock the bear inside the vehicle . . . which could perhaps explain why –

    “To add insult to injury the bear took a big dump in the back of the SUV and then broke out the rear window.”

  15. Phil_NL says:

    Chicken,

    That remains to be seen. Latin might not have a word for car, but there is at least anecdotal evidence (see “Duty” in Frederick Forsyth’s bundle “No comebacks”) that the phrase “currus meus fractus est”, uttered to the local priest, gets you a car repairman even where no-one speaks your language.

    The only thing I wouldn’t do is mention the bear in this case, since any reference to “Urs” might be misunderstood and start a discussion about a certain Swiss theologian. And we can be pretty sure that he didn’t wreck the car..,

  16. Marion Ancilla Mariae says:

    A Sequoia SUV . . . or a three-year-old grizzly bear . . . ?

  17. Marion Ancilla Mariae says:

    Re: the Latin word for car: It would seem that *autocin?tum* is the word chosen by the Vatican to correspond to *automobile,* (according to the Vatican’s Italian to Latin lexicon of modern vocabulary which appears on the Vatican website.)

    http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/latinitas/documents/rc_latinitas_20040601_lexicon_it.html

  18. Absit invidia says:

    Guess we can continue questioning evolution.

    If we are descended from beasts shouldn’t at least this griz get a grip on himself when it comes to the mind of human technology?

  19. Michael_Thoma says:

    Someone told the bear that his momma left him some honey in the sequoia..

    http://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-black-bear-resting-in-a-tree-in-sequoia-national-park-california-297308252.jpg

    Wrong sequoia!

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