by Last week in North Carolina, a 3-year-old boy wanders off from his grandmother’s backyard. He gets lost. A search party goes out to look for him, but they can’t find him. Two days later, the little boy suddenly shows up. He is found about 90 yards away from his home. He is in good health, no frost bite, no hyperthermia, even though the child spent two nights in 19F degree weather. The little boy tells a tale of a bear protecting him and keeping him warm.
That’s an extraordinary story. Do bears really do things like that? Well, according to social media yes, they do. And typical of animal lovers most began to anthropomorphize the bear. One person on Facebook even cited a book “The Bear That Heard Crying” by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, Helen Kinsey. The book description is “A fictionalized retelling of the true story of three-year-old Sarah Whitcher, who, in 1783, became lost in the woods of New Hampshire and was protected by a bear until her rescue four days later.”
Well, that was a long time ago.
The 3-year-old boy who spent two days lost in the woods of eastern North Carolina tells his family he “hung out with a bear” for companionship while hundreds of people searched frantically in cold and rainy weather to find him.
His aunt, Breanna Hathaway, shared that revelation on Facebook Friday morning, adding that Casey “is healthy, smiling, and talking” after being found late Thursday night. The post has gotten more than 500 comments and 2,100 shares through the day.
“He said he hung out with a bear for two days,” she posted. “God sent him a friend to keep him safe. God is (a) good God. Miracles do happen.”
I did a little more digging into the story. What I found on social media were the locals who know the family. They speculated that a mentally disabled man named Bear who lives near the boy’s family may be “the bear” the child is referring to. “Show the boy a picture of a bear and a picture of the man named Bear and let’s see who the boy picks out,” says one poster.
Good idea. Perhaps, the police have thought of that. But, whatever the case, there’s more to this story than a wild bear snuggling a human child warm on those cold, rainy nights.