What do you do when a bear wanders into your garden? The internet’s favourite answer comes as a joke in two parts: the Canadian way, which is calm and polite, and the Finnish way, which involves a lot of shouting and one very famous Finnish swear word. The pairing began as a Tumblr thread and spread from there to the wider web. It is funny because it plays on national stereotypes, but it also touches on real advice about bears, some of which is sound and some of which you should not copy.
Below are the clips and the Tumblr thread behind the joke, followed by what wildlife experts actually say about bears near homes.
The Canadian way: calm, quiet and patient
The thread opens with a Tumblr user describing a conversation with a boyfriend in Canada: stay calm, let the bear know you are there, give it space, and it will usually leave. That is close to standard advice for black bears, the species most people in Canada meet near their homes. The one detail that does not fit is the mention of polar bears, which are a very different case and are discussed below.
The video above, used for the Canadian half of the joke, appears to show a backyard visit by black bears, like the scene in the still at the top of this page, the kind of scene that is common in forested parts of Canada and the northern United States. Canada has a large black bear population: surveys in the mid-1990s estimated between about 396,000 and 476,000 animals in just seven provinces.
The Finnish way: one word does the job
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
The original Finnish clip, which reportedly showed a man shouting a bear out of his yard, is no longer available. The Tumblr replies and the drawing that followed kept the joke alive.
Replies to the post quickly turned it into a national comparison, with one user summing up the Finnish response as a long, rolling “PERRRrRrrRrKELE”. Perkele is probably the best-known Finnish curse word. It originally meant an evil spirit and is linked by many scholars to an old name of the thunder god; today it works roughly like a very strong “damn it”.
An illustrator turned the thread into a two-panel comic. In the first panel a nervous person peeks round the corner of a house and quietly asks the bear and its cub to leave, in the gentle style of the Canadian advice.
The second panel is the punchline: a furious figure in a woolly jumper bursts out of the door yelling “Perrrrkele”, with “saatana” (Satan) and other Finnish curses filling the air, and the startled bear tumbling backwards off the porch. The broom and the overturned bucket add to the sense that this is a household under siege.
The thread then grew into a list of “two kinds of people” answers. One user offered a firm, almost parental line, telling the bears that there is nothing for them in the yard.
Another reply plays with the same line, pointing out that saying there is no honey is exactly what a person hiding honey would say. The joke works because bears really are drawn to food smells, which is why experts stress keeping attractants away from houses.
The final screenshot returns to the Canadian stereotype: the only way to be more Canadian, one user writes, would be to offer the bear doughnuts and an apology. It is a gentle joke about Canadian politeness, and a reminder of why the comparison spread so widely.
Black bears, brown bears and polar bears are not the same
Part of what makes the comparison unfair is that the two countries mostly have different bears. The bears near Canadian homes are usually American black bears. They generally avoid confronting people; when they feel threatened they tend to bluff, by charging and stopping short, blowing air or swatting the ground. Most of the rare attacks on people happen where bears have become used to human food, for example around campgrounds.
Finland’s bear is the Eurasian brown bear, the country’s national animal, with a population of roughly 2,000. Brown bears in northern Europe have a remarkably good safety record: Scandinavia has recorded only a handful of fatal attacks in the last century.
Polar bears are another matter. They live on the Arctic coast and sea ice, not in typical Canadian suburbs, and the advice to simply let them know you are there does not fit them well. Recorded attacks are rare, but most were made by hungry young males near settlements. In Churchill, Manitoba, local authorities even keep a holding facility, nicknamed the polar bear jail, for bears that come into town.
What to do if a bear visits your garden
Neither clip is a safety guide. Wildlife agencies in North America and Europe give broadly similar advice for a bear near a house:
- Stay inside or move calmly back indoors. Do not approach the bear, and never get between a mother and her cubs.
- Do not run. Running can trigger a chase, and bears are much faster than people.
- From a safe place, make the bear aware of you with a loud, firm voice. Noise can help move a bear on, which is the one part of the Finnish method that has some basis.
- Remove what attracted it: rubbish, bird feeders, pet food, barbecue grease and fallen fruit. Studies of black bears found that closing open dumps and stopping feeding reduced aggressive encounters almost everywhere it was tried.
- In bear country, carry bear spray when you walk or camp, and report bold or repeat visitors to local wildlife authorities rather than dealing with them yourself.
Letting dogs loose to chase a bear is not recommended, because an angry bear may turn and follow the dog straight back to its owners.
Two clips are not two nations
The joke depends on stereotypes: Canadians as unfailingly polite, Finns as quiet people with a short fuse and a rich vocabulary of swear words. Like most national jokes, it works because people in both countries enjoy the exaggeration of themselves. But two clips show two particular people on particular days, and plenty of Canadians shout at bears while plenty of Finns stay calm. Enjoy the comparison as internet humour, and keep the real lesson: give bears space, take away their food, and let them leave on their own terms.
Explore a related story: Britain and Australia: A Playful Wildlife Photo Comparison.
Sources: Screenshots from a Tumblr thread (users trapperweasel, official-sachsen-anhalt and others; comic artist not credited in the thread); Wikipedia: American black bear; Wikipedia: Eurasian brown bear; Wikipedia: Polar bear; Wikipedia: Perkele; Parks Canada: Bear safety.
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