Cocaine Bear reminds us animals will eat anything, making trouble for them — and us

Based on the trailer, it's clear Mike McIntosh doesn't think much of the movie Cocaine Bear.

"Snarling like a dog and bearing its fangs and the growls, that's not really how bears act in real life," he said. "I can't see anything there that depicts an actual bear and a bear's behaviour."

There are few people in North America who know more about bears than McIntosh. After all, he's been working with them for the past 31 years at Bear With Us, the animal rescue he founded in Sprucedale, Ont., about an hour's drive east of Parry Sound.

Cocaine Bear, which premiered Friday, might be based on a true story, but it's no documentary. The thriller-comedy is based on the true story of a bear authorities nicknamed "Pablo Escobear" after it consumed cocaine left by a smuggler who crashed his plane in the backwoods of Tennessee. 

In the movie, the drug-addled CGI bear goes on a murderous, cocaine-fuelled rampage. In real life, the bear died alone in the woods after it overdosed.

"The only part might be the true story is that a bear ate a bit of cocaine," McIntosh said. "That part, I guess, is more bear behaviour. It ate something that probably didn't taste too bad."

McIntosh said he's never had a bear come into his care that's consumed cocaine, or any drug for that matter, but the movie does illustrate how animals can get into trouble when they consume human goods. 

From raccoons apparently drunk on fermented fruit, to dozens of pigeons tripping on millet laced with a hallucinogenic pesticide, even a pet dog that accidentally consumed cannabis and possibly cocaine, there are plenty of real-life examples of animals willing to try anything once. 

When wild animals die under mysterious circumstances in Ontario, they often end up on Brian Stevens's necropsy table. The veterinary pathologist at the University of Guelph also works with the Canadian Wildlife Centre as a sort of wild animal CSI, where he tries to figure out what killed them. 

He said he's never seen any evidence of a wild animal overdosing on an illicit substance like cocaine.

"None that I'm aware of," he said. "I say 'aware of' because, we will get animals submitted to us that are acting strange and we aren't always able to test for all toxins, so it's possible there are some that slipped through with us just not testing for it because there was no history to suggest a toxin could have been involved."

It's not like there aren't opportunities for wild animals to get their hands on someone's stash. They seem to penetrate human spaces all the time, like a polar bear attempting a break-in at a house in Labrador, or two moose stopping at a Tim Horton's drivethru, or even a pig apparently using one of the chain's washrooms in Windsor, Ont.

Wild animals also seem to steal from us whenever the opportunity comes up, whether it be our garbage or even something like a Canadian flag, which was something a beaver once did to a photographer from Saskatoon.

It's why McIntosh said it's important for homeowners in bear country to be mindful that what they do around their homes affects their wild neighbours. Because, while he's never seen a bear do cocaine, he has seen a bear get into bromethaline, a rat poison — and, he said, it's not pretty.