Bear takes up residence outside family’s Southern California home
While bear sightings are not uncommon in mountain communities this time of year, two families in the San Gabriel Valley had particularly close encounters with their large, furry neighbors.
Bree and Jamey Tate say they’re fairly used to seeing a bear rummaging through their trash outside their Monrovia home late at night, but their latest visitor not only collected some trashed snacks from the garbage can, it also set up camp.
“You could hear him just dragging [the trash can] and then grunting a little bit and then pulled it in,” Jamey told KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff. “He was in there just chomping away.”
The bear, which appears to be tagged, then found shelter inside the crawl space on the side of the couple’s house.
“This is the first time a bear has just taken up residency in our area, like in our home,” Bree said.
For the Tate’s, who are expecting their third child in August, they say their unexpected visitor was mellow, but they worry of his close proximity.
“The initial concern is that we have two kids running around, we don’t want them to have an accidental encounter with a bear,” Jamey said.
The couple called animal control, who told them that there is not much they can do. Wildlife experts say as long as the animal is not threatening public safety or confronting people, they don’t get involved.
In the meantime, the family covered up the opening where the bear had taken up residence and are hoping it will find its way back to its natural habitat.
Further up the mountain about five miles north, the McCloseky family’s home surveillance cameras captured a scary encounter between a bear and their 15-pound poodle named Potato.
It was Potato who sensed the bear’s presence and when his owners opened the door to see what was going on, he dashed outside to confront the bear head on.
“I thought he was actually going to get seriously hurt,” Jillian McCloskey said.
Fortunately, the dog was unharmed and chased the bear off their property.
“Obviously, our goal is to always have the dog on a leash because there is the concern that the bear could turn to protect itself and easily maul a dog,” Patrick McCloskey said.
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Officials at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife say bears are good at finding their own food and it would be unusual for them to go after a dog or cat. Still, they say it’s important to reduce the things that attract them in the first place, like trash and fallen fruit.
CDFW is trying to keep tabs on all these sightings and asks anyone who spots a bear in their neighborhood to notify them by going to their website.
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