In Missouri, It’s Completely Illegal to Do This With a Bear

It's no secret there are some strange laws in Missouri, but this might be the weirdest of them all. There is one activity that is completely illegal to do with a bear and the fact that there's a law against it means it's happened at least once.

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This fun random fact ended up on my radar when I happened upon an article about crazy Missouri laws on Only In Your State. #1 on their list was this juicy Missouri no-no:

In Missouri, it is illegal to drive with an uncaged bear.

I immediately knew I had to know more. I never rely on just once source when I find something insane like this. That led me to an article on the Olivet Nazarene University website confirming this driving with an uncaged bear thing is really a Missouri law.

An attorney in Tucson confirms the "no driving with an uncaged bear" law, but found a loophole if this restriction is cramping your Missouri driving style. They add the following:

If you happen to own a bear cage, you can transport bears wherever you like within the state of Missouri.

Brilliant. I love having options.

Back to my original theory about the fact that there's a law against it means it's happened at least once. I Googled it (for your own sake, don't) and could not find a documented episode where Billy Bob said "hey that bear over there needs a ride, let's pick him up".

One other Missouri bear fact (and you can read the law yourself) is it's illegal to wrestle a bear after you've given it a ride. Dang.