'Most people don't have pets that can kill them,' Jeff 'The Bear Man' Watson observes. Unless, of course, you're Jeff himself, because he takes care of two brown bears called Bob and Screech at his home in Indiana - only he refuses to call them pets. 'They don’t meet the traditional definition of a pet,' he explained. 'These are wild animals, apex carnivores - and they rule the roost. 'Most people think that if they take a wild animal, and they love it and they treat it just right that somehow you will get it to surrender its natural instincts. 'That will never happen. You can never tame a bear. You can train one but you can never tame one.' Jeff 'The Bear Man' Watson shares his Indiana home with two adult brown bears, called Bob and Screech, who he adopted from an animal sanctuary that closed down Jeff shares a bond with the two animals, but is under no illusions about the nature of their relationship. 'They rule the roost,' he said Taking care of the animals is a full-time job for Jeff, who says one of the biggest struggles of keeping wild animals like Bob and Screech is keeping them entertained Watson has a history of raising bears that dates back almost three decades, though his obsession with the animals goes right back to childhood. He got his first bear, a Kodiak cub named Brody, in 1995 while he was recovering from a neurological disease that robbed him of his ability to walk. After regaining his feet, Watson said somebody gave him the opportunity to raise Brody and he took it, feeding him milk from a bottle for three years. Watson said: 'He would take nine half-gallon calf bottles at a time. He started off at 8lbs, at a year old he was 400lbs, and a year and a half he was 550lbs. 'When you raise a bear, you become a surrogate mother and they won't leave your side, they go through a lot of separation anxiety. 'This is a lot like a human being, most definitely when they're young they see you as their mother.' Jeff has an obsession with bears that goes back to childhood, but began raising them almost three decades ago when he took on a Kodiak cub called Brody Brody became famous and appeared in TV, film and adverts including Energizer batteries and Rice Kirspie Treats. These days Jeff uses his bears to educate people about the animals Brody went on to become a star of the screen, appearing in commercials including Energizer batteries and Rice Krispie Treats, along with TV shows such as Hardball with Chris Matthews and 1999 film P.T. Barnum, about the American showman. At one point, Watson and Brody were invited to the home of boxer Muhammad Ali, where they spent a day with him. Several years ago Watson was given the opportunity to take on Bob and Screech after an animal park in Georgia closed down and was unable to re-home them. 'They're litter mate brothers around seven years of age and they came from a park in Georgia,' he explained. 'It was a tourist attraction, and they went out of business and prior to going out of business a friend of mine had called me and said, 'Hey they've got a couple of bear cubs they don't want'. 'I didn't pay for them, they were given to me. People ask me if I rescued them and to me that's kind of an overplayed word. 'I took them, I've raised them, and I've loved them, and I've tried to give them the best life you can give a captive bear - who knows what their fate would been.' At one point, Watson harboured hopes of releasing Bob and Screech back into the wild, but after speaking to experts he was unwilling to go through with it. Watson refuses to refer to the bears as pets because they are apex predators who can never be tamed. 'You can train a bear, but you can never tame one,' he added Watson invites tourists to his ranch to see the bears and gives them lessons about how to behave in bear country in the hopes of saving both humans and bears from getting hurt While Watson says he has made plans for Bob and Screech in case he dies, he does not intent to give them up and will keep caring for them as long as possible Because the pair have been hand-reared they have lost their fear of humans, meaning they will routinely approach people and houses, and are likely to get killed. The only way to break that association would be to inflict pain on the bears, so they would associate people with negative feelings and stay clear of them, and Watson said he was unwilling to go through it it. Having decided there was no viable alternative but to keep the pair, he decided to use them for educational talks and teach people how to stay safe in bear country. 'The animal itself can benefit, and the people can benefit, so I could hopefully save the lives of people - and of bears. And that's where I'm at now,' he said. 'People ask me, 'What does the future hold for Bob and Screech?'. I've made arrangements if something were to happen to me, that they could go somewhere. 'But their future at this time, is to stay with me. 'I know that some people would think that that's not healthy for them, but once they build a bond with somebody, it's kind of hard to break that bond.'All rights reserved for this news site dailymail and under his responsibility