Black Bear Pops Out of School Dumpster, Surprising Principal: Video - PEOPLE

A West Virginia elementary school principal was caught off guard when he went outside to handle the trash on Monday — and it was quite a hairy situation.

After unlocking the school's dumpster, James Marsh came face to face with the large black bear stuck inside the container.

In footage shared by the Nicholas County Board of Education on Facebook, a black bear pops out of the dumpster as soon as Marsh unlocks it. The pair's faces are inches apart. Once Marsh registers that he's staring at a bear, he takes off running. Thankfully the bear took off, too, in the opposite direction.

"Who says principals don't deserve hazard pay????," reads the caption shared with the video. The encounter occurred on May 1, 2023, at 7:16 am outside Zela Elementary School.

"That was a big surprise. I was not expecting that" Marsh later told WSAZ 3. "You throw trash in a dumpster and you throw things in it, but you really don't expect things to come out.

The bear encounter was a first for Marsh. "I have not been that close to one, and I doubt many people have," the principal said.

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"I didn't even get to open the lid," he added. "It just popped out of there like a jack-in-the-box. It let out a pretty loud growl or roar, actually, and that was about the most intimidating thing of the whole event."

Marsh said his students had some advice for him for the next time he finds himself staring down a bear. "I had a couple of little girls tell me when you see a bear, you're not supposed to run," he shared.

According to Marsh, the footage of his bear run-in has gone viral amongst his students at Zela Elementary School. "The students at the school, they wanted to see it, and I showed it to all of them," he said. "They thought it was just hilarious."

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Marsh, on the other hand, was not laughing during the incident. "I think both of us were equally surprised," Marsh said, referencing the bear. "When you're that close, they don't seem that friendly."

Going forward, the principal has some plans to prevent the school's dumpster from housing any more bears. The West Virginia DNR — which had provided the lock Marsh was using after another bear was caught poking around the dumpster — returned to the school following the principal's big bear moment to offer additional security measures, Marsh explained to WSAZ 3.

"We want that guy to go find his meals someplace else," he added.

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Black Bear Pops Out of School Dumpster, Surprising Principal: Video - PEOPLE
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