ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – While out on a test run on Alaska’s North Slope, diesel mechanic Kadon Mroczkowski noticed several parked trucks unoccupied with their doors wide open.
“‘What’s going on?’” he replied when asked what he was thinking. “There’s nothing in front. There’s no, like, cars. There’s nobody outside of the car. So, I’m kind of like, ‘Okay.’”
While that initially caught his attention, it was the next thing he spotted that triggered a double-take.
A group of brown bears was seen going truck to truck, opening the doors on each in search of food.
Mroczkowski captured the moment on video, creating a viral moment for Alaska viewers.
A group of brown bears was caught on camera last week snooping in parked trucks, opening the truck doors in search of food.
What gave the moment a humorous edge was the method the bears were using in their search for something good — casually opening each truck door without putting hardly a scratch on each one.
“I’ve never seen them get inside of a truck at all, ever, let alone close the door after he was done, too,” Mroczkowski said. “He was kind of least polite about it.
“He opened it, peeped in, was like, ‘Alright,’ closed it, dipped out. There was no food for him.”
Mroczkowski said there was a total of four bears roaming the area where at least 17 trucks were parked in a row.
As a diesel mechanic in Deadhorse who calls Wasilla home, Mroczkowski said he was finishing a test drive on a truck that he had been working on when he came across the bears looking for food.
Mroczkowski said a group of Deadhorse police and animal watch officers arrived shortly afterwards to help guide the animals back to the wilderness.
A group of brown bears were caught on camera last week snooping in parked trucks, opening the truck doors in search of food.(Courtesy Kadon Mroczkowski)
Mroczkowski said he’s never seen bears behaving like that, but also acknowledged that that is their territory.
“It is that winter time, especially for us in Alaska, you know, it’s getting that time,“ he said. ”They’re looking for any little bit of last food that they can take in before it comes to hibernation time.”
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