It was on his Instagram account that chef Adrián Herrera, whom the public knows for his appearances in multiple seasons of MasterChef Mexico, shared the moment when he was surprised by the appearance of a black bear in the middle of Chipinque Park, in the municipality of San Pedro Garza Garcia, in Nuevo León.
And it is that the controversial cook, who is currently off the screen of TV Azteca, the television station on which he became known since the first season of the internationally licensed reality show, shared a couple of videos in which he documented his encounter with the huge animal and did not avoid broadcasting some high-sounding words, such what is their style.
It was while walking through the local natural park that he witnessed the passage of the bear, one of the protected mammals in the national park. Fortunately, the animal continued on its way, and as documented later by the cook from the entity, went to the garbage.
“Ándale, p*nche handy bear, animal, look nothing else, the w*y is very fat”, Herrera is heard saying in the short clip that counts almost 103 thousand views. The former partner of chef Betty and chef José Ramón Castillo on the TV Azteca gastronomic program wrote in the post more about his experience with the wild animal:
“Spending quiet and relaxing vacation days here in Chipinque. And of course, with a bear included. The specimen in question is called “Yogi”; it is a well-known bear in the park. He doesn't do anything. He's hanging around, sniffing around and flipping the trash cans. When you see it, it frightened you -it's big-, but it's not a p*to grizzly. Nor is it a stuffed animal: it is a wild animal, we must not forget it”, he noted.
Already calmer and in another recording, the cook joked with the animal, who was already next to a pile of garbage, probably looking for food. “Hey friend, look, turn around, stop the Face, go on”, you hear him say.
It is common for Chipinque attendees to observe this class of mammals loose, who are protected by Animal Protection and keep them identified. Since July 2020, the issue of the growing dispersal and habituation of these mammals to human settlements in the north of the country was put in the middle of the discussion when images of a black bear living with people, playing with a cat and even “stealing” a bag of fried chicken.
Also criticized was the fact that some people resorted to taking “selfies” with the bear whom they were on the road in the vicinity of the nature reserve. The song went viral and the famous “black bear of Chipinque” was finally located and captured by Profepa on August 6, 2020.
Located in the courtyard of a house in the municipality of San Pedro Garza Garcia, the bear was captured and identified with a tracking device in the ear.
Although the videos of contact between black bears and people in the vicinity of the Chipinque Ecological Park in Nuevo León are comical or touching, biologists who specialize in the behavior of these animals have warned of the great risk they pose.
The biologist Guillermo Herrera Pérez pointed out that the Chipinque bear is an animal with a total level of habituation to humans, of 9.5 points on a scale of 10. He explained that when the animal comes close to smelling people it is feeling its prey, testing it to see if it is edible. The encounters so far have been fortunate because there have been no violent attacks, however, explained the scientist, the animal has already been taught that it can approach that distance.
Therefore, he recommended that when you see a black bear you should take distance, “make noise, vocalizations, make the animal feel that it is not welcome. A bear with normal behavior, seeing people and hearing their voice or screams, must run away. This is no longer natural. We are in a rather complicated situation,” he said of the bears' approaches to people.
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