When animals attack, or decide they really like your car.

Byline: INSIDE THE OUTDOORS By Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Sometimes you just have to bear down. Consider the Midsummer Day's Nightmares encountered in the latest chapter of "This Wild Life," our periodic report on Man's encounters with members of the Animal Kingdom:

Kent Crabtree, a 1975 graduate of Sheldon High School, figures he's lucky to be alive after being charged by an Alaskan Brown bear while doing routine telemetry salmon surveys at the headwaters of the Berners River near Juneau recently.

Crabtree and his partner, Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Wayne Lonn, were minding their business of tracking radio-tagged coho salmon when Lonn glanced up and saw a bear charging full-speed toward them.

"Wayne was alert and ready," Crabtree told JuneauEmpire.com. "He saw the bear before I did and yelled, `Bear!' '

Lonn also yelled that the safety on his rifle was stuck.

Crabtree had a six-pound box of electronic gear hanging from a strap around his neck and was holding an antenna in one hand when Lonn yelled his warning, the report said.

He tossed aside the equipment, unslung the rifle on his shoulder and fired two rounds from his .338-caliber rifle at the charging bear, which crumpled into the river 10 feet from where the men stood.

In 23 years with the Fish and Game Department, Crabtree said, it was the first bear that has charged him, although he's encountered many that have made feinting "false charges."

Crabtree and Lonn said they don't know what prompted this particular bear to charge, although they later found porcupine quills embedded in one of its paws.

Neil Barten, a wildlife biologist who later measured the bear's skull, said it was the largest recorded in that wildlife management unit. He estimated the bear was 20 years old.

Crabtree said he wasn't thinking about how big the bear was as it charged toward him.

"I was thinking how small I was," he said.

Crabtree's bear scare occurred just days after an apparently unprovoked attack by a Grizzly bear took the lives of two campers in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Anchorage attorney Richard Huffman and his retired schoolteacher wife, Katherine, were killed by a predatory grizzly bear while camped along the Hulahula River. They were nearing the end of a two-week wilderness float trip.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials who investigated the incident told the Anchorage Daily News that the victims' camp was carefully arranged, with food stored in bear-proof containers far from their tent.

"All the indications now are it was a predatory attack. It just hardly ever happens," Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley said.

Meanwhile, a week or so after the Crabtree encounter, a smaller black bear was shot by a Fish and Game officer after it climbed into a Subaru near Chugach State Park and refused to leave.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, the car's owner left the vehicle's doors open while packing for a trip to Seward when the bear jumped in, ravaged his lunch, ripped the upholstery and dug into a box of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal.

The owner beat pots and pans and banged on the car with a shoe. The bear not only refused to leave but began snarling and lunging.

The fish and game officer said he decided to shoot the bear because it appeared to be the same one that had been approaching people and cars in the same area for several weeks.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, the "Kennebeck Journal" reports that a Texas couple survived with cuts and abrasions after a moose landed on the roof of their rental car, collapsing it.

The couple was driving toward Canada on U.S. Highway 201 when they hit the moose in the foggy, rainy conditions. The moose catapulted into the air and landed on their car's roof. The new sedan was destroyed.

The moose trotted off and was not seen again.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at [e-mail].