DENVER — Donna Munson considered the black bears that swarmed across her land in southwestern Colorado to be her pets.
She fed them dog food and scraps — poking the food through a metal fence she had built around her porch — attracting so many bruins that neighbors sometimes counted as many as 14 on her property at a time.
On Friday, one of them killed Munson, 74, slashing her head through the fence and dragging her body underneath it to consume her.
“She was dead-set on continuing to feed the bears, and unfortunately, she paid the ultimate price,” said Ouray County Sheriff’s Investigator Joel Burk, who shot a bear that tried to approach Munson’s remains at the scene.
Her death represents one of the rare instances in which bears have killed humans in this state; officials have recorded two other fatal attacks since they began tracking human-bear encounters in the 1960s.
For the past decade, Munson had developed a reputation for doting on wildlife at her log cabin about 190 miles southwest of Denver. She fed bears, skunks, elk and stray cats, said Tammy York, 36, who boarded with Munson seven years ago.
She described Munson as a sweet woman whose husband had died years earlier and who seemed to have little contact with other people.
Munson apparently was standing inside her fenced porch when a bear swiped at her face through the fence, Burk said. An autopsy released this week indicated the bear struck her unconscious, then pulled her underneath the fence into the yard, where he ate portions of her body. Her walker was found inside the fence, Burk said.
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