Photo courtesy Jason Rettinger

A Dodge Neon owned by Haines resident Jason Rettinger was a little worse for wear after an early-morning encounter with four brown bears last week.

Why did the bears cross the road?

To get to the other side -- although after they met the business end of a Dodge Neon they probably wished they had stayed put.

On Friday morning Jason Rettinger was driving south on the Haines Highway, heading into town for an early morning swim at the pool. It was about 6:30 a.m. and still dark out when he turned a corner and saw the bears -- four of them, stretched across the road like the cover of a Beatles album.

Rettinger swerved to the left, his winter tires skidding on the ice, but he still crashed into two of the surprised bruins.

Rettinger coasted away from the scene for a short distance before stopping.

"I didn't really want to get out and see how they were doing," Rettinger said. "Bears aren't known for their good manners after they're hit by a car."

The bears, most likely a sow and her three cubs, were all about the same size, Rettinger said, and they didn't stick around to file an accident report. The family continued in the direction they had been traveling, cruising directly up into the Takshanuk Mountains and leaving a very light blood trail behind.

Rettinger didn't escape unscathed either: His 2004 Dodge Neon is just about totaled, with the passenger side crushed all the way to the door.

It might seem a little late in the year for a grisly grizzly accident, but there are a number of factors that determine when a bear decides it's time to den up for the winter.

"They have a late season salmon run down there, so as long as there's food available they'll stay out a little bit longer," said Jessy Coltrane, a state Department of Fish and Game assistant area wildlife biologist for Anchorage.

Daylight length, snow cover, and temperature also play a role in a bear's decision.

Rettinger, 34, is a driver for Alaska Marine Trucking. He's lived in Haines since 1992. It's a small town, with about 2,200 people living in the entire borough, and Rettinger said he feels like he knows just about everybody.

"People were calling and stopping by work to say ‘Glad you're all right,'" he said. "I've never been in a car accident before, so it was nice to see people were concerned."

Rettinger thinks he hit the sow with the driver's side of his car and a cub with the passenger side, but he isn't positive. One thing he is sure of, however, is that these were brown bears, and not some black bears staying out late.

"I got the hair to prove it," he said.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul_alaskadispatch.com.