By Tim Binnall
A West Virginia elementary school principal got quite the fright when he unlocked the building's dumpster and came face to face with a bear that sent him running for his life. According to a local media report, the wild encounter occurred on Monday morning as James Marsh set about opening the trash receptacle outside of Zela Elementary in the city of Summersville. The normally routine task of unlocking the dumpster took a terrifying turn when, the principals profound surprise, a bear burst forth from the metal bin. "I didn't even get to open the lid," he later recalled, "it just popped out of there like a jack-in-the box."
Only a few inches inches away from the animal's face, Marsh was understandably unsettled and quickly fled the scene while the bear did the same in the opposite direction. "It let out a pretty loud growl or roar actually," the principal observed, "and that was about the most intimidating thing of the whole event." Captured by a security camera at the school, the shocking scene was subsequently shared online by the Nicholas County Board of Education, which jokingly asked "who says principals don’t deserve hazard pay?" It is uncertain how exactly the bear managed to get into the dumpster in the first place, though local wildlife officials reinforced its lock later that day in the hopes that a similarly scary encounter won't happen again.