The bear (Central Europe)

This was set by me as a Reading Comprehension test one year:

A middle European country was having trouble attracting enough tourists as it had no beaches or mountains.  They then came up with the idea of hunting holidays as they had plenty of forests.  The only problem was they didn’t have that many wild animals for these hunting trips.  Someone suggested hiring a circus bear which would be tame and would obey their commands, and filling the guns with blanks so that the bear wouldn’t get killed and could be recycled, leaving the tourists to think it was just their own poor shooting skills.

A circus bear was duly hired and released in the woods, near where the tourists were for them to spot and shoot.  There was a road running through the woods.  As the tourists were about to take aim, a little old lady came trundling down this road just as the bear ambled on to the road.  At the sight of the bear, the little old lady shrieked, abandoned her bike and ran away, whereupon the bear leapt on to the bicycle and rode off.