Wild PSA About Why You Should Lock Your Car Doors at Montana Trailheads

We've talked about it being "Spider Season, " but Montanans know the real season we're in right now is "bear season." That's why there are great resources and programs in the Missoula area to keep both humans and bears safe. Things like:

• The Great Bear Apple Drive which helps keep apples off the ground and made into ciders instead and is currently underway.
• Advice for staying bear aware during hunting season.
• Bear Smart Missoula an advocacy and outreach organization that works with partners like Montana Fish Wildife, and Parks and the U.S. Forest Service to "reduce human-bear and human-wildlife conflicts."

Sometimes, advice about how to stay safe around bears comes from other places, like social media.

A video posted by @yournationalparks on Instagram shared why it's all too important to lock your car. And this advice applies to trailheads anywhere, not just national parks. Take a look at this photo, you probably know what's going to happen next.

Yep, that bear is going to try to get into those cars.

Locking car doors is a habit for me. I'm always surprised when I see examples of people not locking their doors. From the post it looks like this happened in Glacier Bay National Park. I could maybe understand if this was an overlook and you thought you'd only be away from your car for a few minutes so you left it open. But at a trailhead, when you might be hiking for hours? You should probably lock your doors.

You'd think this black bear was Yogi Bear just nonchalantly opening the car door like that.

"Oh god" is right. That bear got inside the car. This reminds me of the cars that were 'ransacked' by bears in the Rattlesnake last fall.

There's some NSFW audio so watch the full video on mute if you need to.

I think we'd all rather see this sort of behavior from bears instead.