Turns out bears have a taste for honey and techno.
According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Jody Flemming a realtor and part-time DJ was hosting a virtual dance party when he got a surprising visitor.
Flemming, 50, has shared his DJ skills throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, streaming techno sets from his home in East Asheville, North Carolina, so people can have quarantine dance parties. It was during one of these virtual events that the father of two met his bear fan face to face.
Footage from the now-infamous set shows Flemming spinning discs inside his home and bopping along to the music when a bear suddenly pops up on the other side of the storm door behind the DJ. In the video, the bear stands up and leans against the door, and appears to be listening contentedly to the music. Eventually, Flemming turns around and realizes he has an audience, and, after being spotted, the bear scampers off.
"I just started playing and kind of got into the first track and I kept hearing this sound. I didn't really know what it was," Flemming told the Citizen-Times. "It was my neighbor in the street blowing their horn. That kind of alerted me that something was going on.
"I thought it was maybe my neighbor coming to tell me my music was too loud. I got kind of halfway over and said, 'Oh, there's a bear there,'" he added.
As a former Great Smoky Mountains National Park ranger and Ashville resident, Flemming says the furry sight didn't scare him, and that he wished the bear stuck around longer and listened to his set instead of getting scared off by his neighbor's horn.
"We get a bunch of bears over here. This particular one has been coming around lately, and we kind of just keep our distance and say 'Hi.' Whenever I saw him, I'd go out on the porch and watch him do his thing," Flemming said of his previous bear encounters. "I wish my neighbors hadn't blown the horn and it could have played out a little more. I was hoping the bear would come back."
The bear is making a comeback. While this close encounter happened in October, Flemming didn't share footage from the moment until Jan. 26. The clip now has over 51,000 views on YouTube. Flemming is hoping the video keeps going viral because he plans to donate a portion of any proceeds made from the footage to the WNC Nature Center.
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