Twelve-year-old Robin Westgate ran outside to the orchard behind his home to collect a bowl to use for popcorn but found a black bear instead, leading to a fight for his life.
Robin fought off the black bear that attacked him in the backyard of his home in Bellingham last Sunday before his father came to the rescue. Now, they’re both recovering from a laceration, scratches, bruises and the shock of coming face to face with a bear.
The family of four had just finished their dinner of roast chicken and potatoes at their home northeast of Lake Whatcom and decided to make some popcorn on the stove as the night wound down to get ready to watch a show.
Robin Westgate had just stepped out of the shower, wearing a bathrobe and a towel around his long hair, when he offered to grab a metal bowl for the popcorn that they had used for collecting pears from the orchard behind their home.
The 12-year-old ducked out of their home into the orchard — full of fruits, nuts, berries and herbs the family lives off — to quickly grab the bowl.
The family’s orchard backs up to thousands of acres of wilderness where black bears are a part of life, and the boy’s father, Noah Westgate, grew up around bears and taught his son and 9-year-old daughter how to deal with them. You get big, loud and never turn your back on it. If you’re going far into the orchard, take an adult with you.
The family keeps a bag of bear mace and air horns handy for the children to take into the orchard, but Robin didn’t grab the tools this time, thinking he’d just be gone a second. Right before he left, his mother started to heat the popcorn.
As he was walking down the path, Robin heard what he thought sounded like a twig snap. He looked up to find a black bear, the two startling each other. It was the same bear they’d seen with a cub the week before.
The 12-year-old instinctively took the towel from his hair, waved it around and yelled, making himself big and backing up slowly. But the bear charged.
Robin threw the towel over its face and backed up. The bear stopped but clawed at him and scraped the right side of his rib cage and swiped at his right hip. Still standing, the 12-year-old noticed the bear had a cub before it charged a second time, biting into his left wrist.
The boy gouged his thumb into the bear’s eye before it let go of his wrist. Robin said no thoughts were going through his head, that he was just acting on instinct, except, “Ew, there’s bear slobber all over my hand.” His shock temporarily numbed the pain.
But he couldn’t let fear overcome him, Robin said. “I need to fight, because otherwise I’m going to die.”
The bear dropped the boy’s wrist, backed up to check on its cub again, and wound up to charge a third time. Robin braced himself, but luckily, his younger sister, Riverley, had come outside to pick up a toy and heard her brother’s screams seconds before.
She immediately told her parents Robin was yelling, and Noah, who was washing dishes from dinner, was “off like a shot.” Without a weapon, the 46-year-old sprinted faster than he ever had in his life, coming just in time to see the bear charging again at his son who was still standing in a defensive position.
Noah began to scream, thinking it would scare the bear off, but it turned on its heels and began to gallop straight toward him.
“ It was the most intense sense of relief that I’ve ever felt, just hearing my dad screaming, running toward me,” Robin said, recalling the moment he saw the bear turn away from him.
Noah sidestepped the bear’s first assault. It skimmed past him and skidded into a cherry tree, before it quickly turned around with its jaws snapping. It chomped into his hand, ripping into his palm, just as he threw a hammer fist punch to the bridge of its nose.
At 6 feet tall, Noah was about the same size as the medium-sized bear. And although it didn’t train him for facing off with a bear, Noah credits Brazilian jujitsu classes he and his son recently began with keeping them calm in the frightening situation.
After being struck by Noah’s hammer fist punch, the bear fell backward. He came at it again with another screaming punch and the bear ran away.
By then, Robin had stumbled back toward the house where his mom met him halfway just as Noah ran back to catch up with them, his bleeding hand wrapped in his shirt at his stomach. The popcorn hadn’t even started popping yet.
Nine-year-old Riverley was sobbing on the back steps as the family came back inside, asking if her brother and father were going to die. But as soon as Noah reassured her they weren’t but that they needed to go to the hospital, she went into “go mode,” filled up water bottles and turned off the stove where the popcorn was still heating.
