From eating a shish kabob one day, to a bullet the next.
It may have been an amusing moment for a few Kananaskis picnickers, but barbecued meat on a stick has proven a death sentence for a black bear fed by humans.
Conservation officers were forced to kill the bear after it became aggressive, charging park visitors and standing with its paws against car windows, demanding more morsels of easy grub.
Only days before, on the May long weekend, an outraged photographer snapped pictures of the three-year-old male bruin munching a shish kabob, tossed to it at the Cobble Flats picnic area in Kananaskis Country.
"The bear was coming into the picnic area and being a little bit pushy, and these people, as the witnesses told me, were antagonizing the bear," said Kananaskis park ecologist John Paczkowski.
"They ended up throwing it food, which you can see in the picture."
If the kabob wasn't the bear's final meal, it was close. The same animal quickly became a serious nuisance and potential threat to other visitors, and park officials made the decision to put it down.
"That was a long and laboured decision to make," said Paczkowski.
He said there was really no other choice -- to move the bear elsewhere wouldn't alter its appetite for human food.
"To relocate the bear would have been passing the problem on to someone else," said Paczkowski.
"We have a huge program for relocation and adversive conditioning of bears, but a bear that gets several positive reinforcements of human food is going to be very hard to turn around."
The people who tossed the fatal kabob have yet to be caught, though conservation officers are still investigating with the help of the woman who took the picture.
Worse yet, this is only one case in a rapidly growing file of bears eating human food -- once eradicated as a quaint-but-brainless practice from the past, feeding the bears is back.
Over the past two weeks, there have been ten reported incidents of humans giving food to bruins in K-Country -- almost as many as the park used to get in an average year.
Meanwhile, Jasper and Banff National Parks are dealing with their own rash of bear feedings near Lake Louise and the Icefields Parkway, with a half-dozen cases reported since the May long weekend.
Usually, there are only a couple of such infractions a year.
No charges have been laid, but national park officials have suspects in mind for an offence that carries a fine of up to $5,000.
One of the illegal feedings reportedly involved an Edmonton family touring the park with visitors from Poland, while officers in Lake Louise are said to be seeking a Calgary family spotted giving handouts to the same bear.
Bean bag guns and rubber bullets are being used in an attempt to convince the bruin that people are a painful prospect when it comes to snacks.
If aversion therapy fails, the bear will be killed.
Paczkowski is at a loss to explain the sudden increase in people wanting to feed wildlife, which all but vanished when the mountain parks started publicizing the negative impact on animals, more than 40 years ago.
Seeing innocent animals killed because a human ignores the rules is disturbing, said Paczkowski.
"It's dreadful, and it shouldn't be happening," he said. "For years we were getting the message out, but obviously the message needs to be reinforced to the public."
Nothing like a fat fine to serve as a reminder, though there may be more to the feeding frenzy than ignorance.
Scan the Internet and you'll find photos and videos of people giving food to bears, including one of two Alberta hunters hand-feeding a black bear cub in the forest.
Perhaps the novelty of capturing a human-bear interaction is too much to resist.
Cameras are everywhere these days -- and a treat for the bear almost guarantees a close-up for the lens.
Whatever the cause, Paczkowski says it has to stop, or more bears will die.
"Some people just have no idea this is unacceptable behaviour," said Paczkowski
