Beer-Drinking Bear Chaser Comes Clean

“After telling wildlife officers and reporters in late February that he brawled with a Florida Black Bear that slammed him to the ground by his pants, [36-year-old Lake County resident Joshua Hennessy] then wrote a sworn statement that was much less dramatic…. ‘I was sitting in my chair outside … drinking a beer and I saw a bear run by the house and for no good reason at all, I jumped up and started chasing it … and tripped over a speed bump and fell.’ That’s what Hennessy wrote in a statement to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He will not face charges, authorities said, though by his own admission he molested wildlife.”