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NP: It sounds like the shotgun was definitely the better idea.

DR: It was. Luckily, this fella just left. My father shot a few rounds over his head, just to scare him off.

NP: Did you have seal meat or deer meat in the freezer? Was he after something?

DR: Dad had a seal for supper. But that was all ate up and disposed of. I don’t know if he smelled the remains. He also beat our neighbour’s door in. He took a boat out. Then he made his way through our house, then he beat in another house’s windows and then he went to another guy, with a stable and killed a sheep, a lamb and a duck.

NP: A duck?

DR: Yes. He even killed a duck. He killed it, but he never ate it, and that is what has us all confused. Even the wildlife officers don’t understand why it killed the animals but didn’t eat them. He was just out to terrorize, I guess.

NP: Do polar bears terrorize your town often?

DR: Once a year, in spring, when the ice floe comes in, you see them. But normally they just get off the floe and walk north and hit the next ice patch and jump on that and keep going north. This time, I guess, he decided to take a few visits. People have been joking around, saying he was looking for a bottle of Coca-Cola.

NP: Was your door locked when he came knocking?

DR: Nope. We hardly ever lock our doors around here.

NP: We lock our doors in Toronto, but we don’t have polar bears.

DR: Everybody knows everybody here. We can leave our house, go away to Toronto for a week and come back and everything will be the same. That’s how much trust there is.