Alaska Man Monday: Fat Bears, and Bears Opening Truck Doors – Also, Auroras
The week brought our first hard frost and one of those aurora shows that stops you in your tracks. I walked out into the dark to head to the office and the sky was painted in ridiculous greens and blues that made the cold feel worth it. There are few places on earth where everyday life collides with wonder like the Great Land.
All that beauty comes with blunt reminders: when you live among apex predators, forget careless habits. Case in point: bears that have learned how to open truck doors. Yes, you read that right.
On Alaska’s North Slope a diesel mechanic noticed a lineup of trucks with doors standing open and then saw bears going truck to truck. What he filmed is equal parts unnerving and weirdly civilized. That clip has plenty of folks talking and thinking twice about what they leave in a vehicle.
While out on a test run on Alaska’s North Slope, diesel mechanic Kadon Mroczkowski noticed several parked trucks unoccupied with their doors wide open.
“‘What’s going on?’” he replied when asked what he was thinking. “There’s nothing in front. There’s no, like, cars. There’s nobody outside of the car. So, I’m kind of like, ‘Okay.’”
While that initially caught his attention, it was the next thing he spotted that triggered a double-take.
A group of brown bears was seen going truck to truck, opening the doors on each in search of food.
Mroczkowski captured the moment on video, creating a viral moment for Alaska viewers.
What gave the moment a humorous edge was the method the bears were using in their search for something good — casually opening each truck door without putting hardly a scratch on each one.
“I’ve never seen them get inside of a truck at all, ever, let alone close the door after he was done, too,” Mroczkowski said. “He was kind of least polite about it.
“He opened it, peeped in, was like, ‘Alright,’ closed it, dipped out. There was no food for him.”
Seeing a bear open a truck door is an eye-opener in the brutalest sense: wildlife adapts fast, and human sloppiness pays the price. Lock up food, keep vehicles clear of scents, and assume a bear’s curiosity will outmatch your complacency. The routine you skip today could be the problem you and a wild animal both regret tomorrow.
Alaska Man score: 4 of 5 moose nuggets. Funny and harmless this time, but it could have gone sideways fast for people and bears alike.
Speaking of brutes with appetites, Fat Bear Week crowned a clear champion this year: “Chunk.” He carried the title and the votes that made him the people’s favorite. The competition is silly, sincere, and a neat reminder that survival in Alaska is a daily grind, even for top predators.
In the final round of the annual Fat Bear Week contest on Tuesday, Chunk earned himself 96,350 votes, beating bear 856, who finished with 63,725 votes, according to Katmai National Park officials.
“They have no idea that they’re pitted against each other right now in this virtual thing that we call Fat Bear Week,” said Sarah Bruce, Katmai National Park Visual Information Specialist. “But they’re both highly successful, highly skilled bears.
“They look very well set up to survive the winter.”
Chunk is an adult male grizzly estimated to be about 1,200 pounds.
This summer, he broke his jaw due to what park officials say may have been a fight with another bear.
After that, Chunk had to relearn how to catch salmon, and has adapted pretty well, changing up his fishing strategy.
Chunk’s story is a small victory for resilience: an injured bear relearning to fish and still stacking weight for winter is the stuff of survival drama. It’s easy to anthropomorphize them, but make no mistake—these animals are running a life-or-death program every season. Chunk won the contest, but more importantly he’s set up to make it through the lean months ahead.
Alaska Man score: 5 fat bears. Big, scrappy, and somehow still lovable even when they’re terrifying.
A Morning and a Reminder
Back to that aurora morning: standing beneath those lights makes you feel both tiny and stubbornly alive. Those skies are a good counterpoint to the chaos of headlines, and a reminder that our world is bigger than politics and full of wild truths. If you live here, you learn to respect the scale of things quickly.
