Every morning he was back at the same bus stop. Not because he waited for a medium, but because, according to a viral story on social media, it seemed to have learned that from there the man who once gave him food would pass.
The images and the story were associated with the Russian locality of Kuznechnoye, in the Leningrad region. However, there are no reliable journalistic or institutional sources that allow to confirm the whole story and all the details with which it is told online.
According to the story spread along with the images, everything would start when a driver would meet a bear looking for food nearby.
On that occasion the man would share with the animal part of his lunch.
He could have finished there.
Instead, according to the story, in the following days the bear would return to the same place.
And then again.
For several weeks it would appear in the morning near the stop, apparently in coincidence with the driver's passing.
From available sources it is not possible to determine with certainty whether this particular sequence of events has actually occurred. The behavior attributed to the bear, however, is plausible.
Bears are in fact able to remember places where they found food easily and can return. If that resource is associated with the human presence, the animal can gradually lose part of the natural distrust of people.
And this is where a seemingly tender scene can become problematic.
A bear that frequents a inhabited area and associates humans with food can be a risk both for people and for the animal itself.
For this reason, even when similar images seem to tell a special relationship, voluntarily feeding wild animals is not a behavior to imitate.
The history of the bear of Kuznechnoye remains a suggestive story circulated online, but not sufficiently documented to be presented as an actual episode.
What this story illustrates well is a real behavior of wildlife: an animal can quickly learn where it found an easy source of food.
For humans it can only be a bus stop.
For a bear accustomed to receiving food, it can become a place where it is worth returning.