A family in Lake Tahoe, California, was going about their daily routine at the beginning of November when all of a sudden, odd, loud noises could be heard coming from the crawl area beneath their home. There was a very, very huge animal beneath there, which they discovered after carefully listening and scanning the area outside. It was most likely a bear.
The family had unintentionally left the door to their crawl area unsecured, and it appeared that one of the neighborhood bears had been searching for a cozy location to spend the winter. He took this as an invitation and settled in. The couple immediately got in touch with BEAR League, a group that frequently deals with situations like these because they wanted to help.
“Crawl spaces are perfect because they’re cave-like,” Ann Bryant, executive director of BEAR League, told The Dodo. “They’re dark, they’re quiet, they’re dry, they’re safe — they’re just absolutely perfect, so if a bear finds an opening, they go in and go, ‘Oh wow, this is great!’ In the winter we deal with it pretty much every day.”
Bryant had assured the couple that she would go out there the next day and assist in moving the bear to a different location, but as the day wore on, the couple stopped hearing noises; as a result, the husband shut the entrance to the crawl area believing the bear had gone on.
But as it happened, the bear was still there.
He [the husband] heard him in the middle of the night and was frightened when he realized, “Oh no, I locked him in there,” Bryant said.
Bryant arrived first thing the next morning to assist in freeing the bear because the family felt so horrible for having unintentionally imprisoned him beneath their house.
“The people were just wonderful, they were so sweet,” Bryant said. “They didn’t want anything bad to happen to the bear, they were worried about him and they felt so bad for locking him under there.”
Luckily, Bryant deals with these situations every day, and knew exactly what to do. She found another entrance to the crawl space and managed to get herself behind the bear where he couldn’t see her, and used a special tool to make loud noises to try and scare the bear out of the crawl space. She told the wife to watch from the window and holler when the bear came out — but for some reason, the bear never did.
After a while, Bryant went outside to figure out why he hadn’t come out yet — and that’s exactly the moment the bear decided it was time to leave.
“He poked his head out and I said, ‘He’s coming out!’ I backed out enough so the bear wasn’t afraid of me,” Bryant said. “He stood there first wondering, ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ And then he ran!”
Everyone watched in awe as the huge bear went dashing past them, on his way to find a less crowded place to sleep for the winter. Bryant recognized the bear immediately, as he’s one BEAR League has known for years, and was thrilled she was able to help him on his journey.
“We’ve known him for a really long time,” Bryant said. “He loves the local Mexican restaurants — he gets into their dumpsters.”
The bear population around Lake Tahoe is large, and during the winter months they are all hunting for warm places to sleep. Crawl spaces and other potential bear entry points must be completely shut up; else, bears will certainly establish a home there.
Because they are so large, Bryant predicted that they would reorder everything. “They don’t aim to hurt you, but they can.”
Fortunately, BEAR League is always delighted to assist in securely removing bears from locations where they shouldn’t be and reassures people that there is no need to be afraid of bears. They only seek for warm places to rest, never intending any da
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