Juniper is a 2-year-old brown bear at the Woodland Park Zoo, a large blonde girl described as sassy and mischievous by her keepers
It was a sunny day in Seattle, and Juniper had spotted a mama duck and her five fuzzy ducklings tootling along in her bear pond.
Juniper nimbly vaulted herself into the pond and swam straight for the ducks. She grabbed a duckling with her long claws, lifted it to her mouth and delicately bit its head off. Unsated, she went for another duckling, an
It’s a birthday party these kids won’t soon forget.
As the children watched, Juniper dove in and devoured the baby birds, one by one, just inches away from the kids peering through the glass.
The woman recording the video, Rachelle, told Storyful she was trying to give her daughter a nice birthday party, but got a bit more than she bargained (or paid) for.
She added that her children were not traumatized by Juniper’s appetite, although she did call the whole incident a “train wreck.”
It’s not the first time a bear in that exact same enclosure pulled the same stunt.
A video posted online last year showed a bear snacking on baby ducks in a similar fashion as horrified children screamed on the other side of the glass.
“That’s not nice,” cried one, as Juniper slurped down a duckling like a raw oyster.
“That’s a good strategy,” said another enthusiastically, after Juniper separated the mama from her babies.
Others smacked the glass with their palms, presumably hoping to distract Juniper enough to save the ducks. But this brown bear did not care.
Midway through the slaughter, Rachelle, the parent recording the event, sounded resigned. “Hey buddy, can we not?” she said, in a tone typically reserved for children who have long ago broken their parents’ spirits.
Juniper came to the Woodland Park Zoo in the summer of 2022 after being discovered alone on an airport runway in Anchorage, Alaska.
Juniper, then 89 pounds, was a fluffy singleton who’d been separated from her mother. No one knows what happened to her mother, although it’s possible she was hit by a car or killed illegally.
Juniper was packed into a small steel cargo container and flown down to Seattle on an Alaska Airlines flight. She was later introduced to Fern, a grizzly bear cub from Montana, and the two became best friends.
Fern can be seen in the TikTok video as well – disinterested as Juniper snarfs down the ducks.
On TikTok, the commenters delighted in the video. “Bear was like sweet, Uber eats is here with my nuggets,” wrote one.“The way it keeps getting worse,” wrote another.
After posting, Rachelle updated her caption to assure viewers that her children were fine after their visit to the bear enclosure
“We see wildlife doing their thing all over where we live,” she wrote. “Our kids are not traumatized.”