Rummaging Russian bear catches mother & toddler by surprise (VIDEO)

A Siberian woman was sunbathing near her house outside Krasnoyarsk when a furry intruder scaled the fence and began sniffing around. Maria Kondratieva somehow kept her composure and filmed the hungry bear.

“I noticed the bear entering my plot out of the corner of my eye, and my small daughter came up to me and said she was scared. After lifting my head I noticed that he was only 5 meters away from me,” Kondratieva wrote in the YouTube video description.

Whereas most people at this point would scream and hide, Kondratieva did nothing of the sort.

“When he turned away from me, I took the child in my arms without panicking, inched towards the house, then took out my phone and started filming.”

In the video, Kondratieva can be heard exclaiming “I can’t believe my eyes, my voice is shaking with fear, as are my hands!” while her daughter is crying. Still, the mother doesn’t budge, even when the bear presses his face to other side of the glass through which it’s being videod.

“Once I finished filming I called my husband. He then called the wildlife service and told me to go upstairs and lock ourselves in. In total the bear was on our land for about 20 minutes before wandering back out.”

While few are brave enough to capture footage of bears, such incidents happen daily in Russia and other countries with considerable bear populations, with sightings even on the outskirts of large settlements. It is estimated that bears kill up to 10 people a year in Russia, with a reindeer herder death in the far north reportedly falling victim last week.

Scientists believe that bears that enter plots are not just looking for an easy source of food, or compensating for poor harvests in the taiga, but are weaker young adults – usually males - who are forced out of the deep forest by dominant alpha-bears.