{"id":1045397,"date":"2026-09-05T18:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1045397\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T18:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:23:14","slug":"bear-scratches-person-napping-in-steamboat-springs-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1045397\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear scratches person napping in Steamboat Springs backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A person was injured Thursday when a bear scratched them while they were napping in a Steamboat Springs backyard.<\/p>\n<p>The person, an adult, was napping in a patio chair when they noticed the bear approaching, according to a Colorado Parks and Wildlife release. Not wanting to startle the bear, the person stayed motionless as the bear huffed and popped its jaw. The bear reached out and scraped the person\u2019s knee. A neighbor then deployed bear spray to scare the bear away.<\/p>\n<p>The person had minor injuries and didn\u2019t seek professional medical treatment, the state wildlife agency said.<\/p>\n<p>Bear encounters have spiked across the state this year as drought drives bears to more populated areas in search of food. Nearly 300 bears <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2026\/09\/04\/colorado-bears-killed-drought\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">had been euthanized this year<\/a> as of Aug. 31, more than triple those euthanized during the same period last year.<\/p>\n<p>CPW did not say whether the bear in Thursday\u2019s encounter had been euthanized.\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.denverpost.com\/dp\/preference\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A person was injured Thursday when a bear scratched them while they were napping in a Steamboat Springs&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1045398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[112723,10809,4439,9577,9560,5295,6772,1370,9574,50,5312,192544,159,418418,255421,67,132,68,837],"class_list":["post-1045397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bear-attacks","tag-bears","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-news","tag-colorado-parks-and-wildlife","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-drought","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mountains","tag-news","tag-parks","tag-routt-county","tag-science","tag-steamboat","tag-steamboat-springs","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117219833082799176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1045398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}