WHITE HAVEN, Pa. – A Boy Scout played dead when attacked by a bear during a camping trip, avoiding serious injury.

Chris Malasics, 14, curled up in the fetal position in his sleeping bag after the bear ripped down his tent at Hickory Run State Park around 11:30 p.m. Friday.

“I was just trying to figure out what to do to not get hurt,” he told the Daily Local News of West Chester.

As the bear started tossing Malasics around, a Scout leader tried to create a disturbance by banging pots and pans and flashing car headlights. The bear eventually wandered off.

Malasics, of Chester Springs, was taken to a hospital for treatment for his cuts and bruises. He was also given a precautionary rabies shot.

Malasics said the experience will not deter him from going camping. In the future, though, he intends to make sure he has a pepper spray for bears, and perhaps a gun.

“I know how to shoot,” he said.

Man accused of assault on inflatable ghosts, pumpkin

LLOYD, N.Y. – A woman says a neighbor attacked her inflatable Halloween lawn display of three ghosts and a giant pumpkin, then apparently smashed his head through her window in a fit of rage.

State Police said officers found a drunken John Odee, 43, inside Dawn Garcia’s house in the Hudson Valley town of Lloyd on Thursday night, arrested him after a brief struggle and charged him with burglary.

Garcia told the Middletown Times Herald-Record she heard hollering and swearing and looked outside to see Odee struggling with the giant pumpkin. “He was enraged. I could see that,” she said.

When she yelled at him to go away, Odee charged the house. She fled through the back door with three of her children and heard window glass breaking. Police said Odee used his head to smash a window to get in.

From Associated Press reports