LEX Attraction: Cocaine Bear

Just 4 miles from our downtown hotel is the taxidermied remains of Pablo Escobear or The Cocaine Bear, a black bear that has been inspiring awe and empathy since its untimely death in 1985.

You see Pablo was walking about doing bear things in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. Enter: Duffle bags filled with 75 pounds of cocaine. The duffles came from the sky, jettisoned from a Cessna plane by a drug smuggler who later lost his life in his attempt to also escape that plane. And our young brown bear, foraging for its final calories before hibernation, came upon the duffles.

Needless to say, Pablo ingested that sweet-smelling cocaine. In fact he binged it.

Georgia’s chief medical examiner at the time, Kenneth Alonso, told United Press International that the bear probably lived for 30 to 45 minutes before succumbing to acute cocaine intoxication, noting that the animal’s stomach was literally packed with cocaine. The bear had suffered cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure and stroke. (Source)

And so with this bear's untimely death, a legend was born.