[By 2013 the financially failing] resort had closed its animal exhibits and moved most of its 350 animals to other locations. [The Sanctuary agreed to take the three Kodiaks, as well as some black bears and mountain lions] so Pat Craig readied one of the big rigs and set out for Florida…Warned by the animal keeper about riling up the monstrous Kodiaks, the team quickly unloaded a transport cage at Max’s door hoping he would become accustomed to it, and then moved on to the easy part of the endeavor, loading up the five black bears and three mountain lions.

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When Pat politely asked Max, Forest, and Jake to walk into their respective transport cages, as their black bear brethren had done, they politely declined. They were not going to enter strange cages under any circumstances. “Nope, nada, not a chance,” Pat remembers. The crew was not going to be able to load the Kodiaks without administering a sedative that could be reversed once each of the big bruins were securely in the trailer. Standard Sanctuary operating procedure in such cases is to roll the sleeping bear onto a reinforced nylon gurney with handles that are used to lift the animal through the door of the cage. As a rule of thumb, you could figure on needing about six people to lift an adult grizzly bear.

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Max was tranquilized and the team of eight, including one giant of a man who could have been an offensive lineman for the Jacksonville Jaguars, positioned themselves around the bear. Then they braced their legs and set their backs into rolling Max onto the gurney. Max did not budge. At all. “It was hilarious,” says Pat, shaking his head.

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Two people could take his whole leg and bend it all the way across his body to the ground and nothing would move, not even an inch. There was just so much mass in the center that it didn’t matter. There wasn’t enough leverage to move him…No matter what angle, how hard we pushed, or what strategy we employed, his body and head remained in the same spot where he went to sleep…After twenty minutes of insanely strenuous effort, and all eight people nearly passing out from the 97 percent humidity and 98 degree heat…I’m like, oh my God, now what are we going to do? Everybody is grabbing and tugging and pulling and it’s hot as hell and we’re all just dying, and we haven’t moved him an inch yet.

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It was time to regroup and figure out plan B, which involved plywood, two by four pieces of lumber, a Waste Management Bagster rated for a 3,300 pound load, and a Telehandler. With the tools at hand, the reinvigorated team levered each bear onto the plywood using the two by fours and then dragged the bear down a narrow passage to a forklift. The forklift tipped the bear onto the Bagster, which was then hoisted over an adjacent sixteen foot tall fence by the Telehandler’s crane. To get each bear through the narrow door of the transport cage, the group flipped each cage on its side, removed the door to gain a few inches and lowered each bear down. Pat smiles, “Just like a big blob of Jell-O,” each bear “hit the door and gravity took over. Each massive beast slipped through its doorway like a buttered water balloon through grandma’s hands at a Fourth of July picnic.”