Don't we all detest the sound of morning alarms? And who would want their peaceful morning to get disrupted by an unforeseen event? But this gentleman's morning was certainly a tad different from others since he was greeted by a scary black bear at dawn. The bear surprisingly emerged from a dumpster outside an elementary school in West Virginia, growling and roaring, and it got quite the rude awakening indeed. Nobody would have believed this occurring if it was not captured on video surveillance footage, which is now grabbing the attention of several media houses.

James Marsh is the principal of Zela Elementary School. He was a little more than shocked to realize that the bear had made it past the lock bar and entered the dumpster over the weekend only to greet him early Monday morning. The bear started prying open the lid of the dumpster on Monday to scare the principal's wits as he began undoing the lock bar. Marsh told in his phone interview with CBS News that the incident would wake a person up. "That was 7:15 a.m. If you are not already awake, that will wake you up."

As soon as the bear's head appeared out of the dumpster, Marsh sprinted away. The bear then jumped out and thankfully, rushed in a different direction. "He looked like he was scared, too - as scared as I was," Marsh said as per the outlet. "Who says principals don't deserve hazard pay????" Nicholas County Board of Education wrote on their Facebook page and reposted the video. A few people in the comment section observed the video carefully and even remarked that "someone might have locked the bear inside the dumpster since the lock bar was fastened from outside."

Following the discovery of some torn-up garbage bags outside the school in Nicholas County, some 70 miles to the east of Charleston, the school installed a lock on the dumpster last week. "It was so big, it was able to pull that lock bar in and out all weekend long," Marsh said as per the outlet. The West Virginia Department of Natural Resources arrived and made changes to the lock after Marsh's terrifying experience. "We will see how it does," Marsh added. "He didn't come back last night."

According to CBS affiliate WOWK-TV, Marsh said that he shared the video with his students who were highly amused by it. "I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe afterward," said Serenity Taylor and Ava Breedlove, two fifth-grade students at Zela Elementary School. We are relieved to know that the principal was unharmed, and his bear encounter video generated a good dose of humor.