The National Park Service advises people to stay at least 100 yards away from bears, but I can’t find anything in their guidelines about what to do if they ring your doorbell.
A man in Yucaipa, California was faced with that strange circumstance, and decided to let the doorbell keep ringing. No right minded person would open the door for a black bear, but then again, there aren’t many bruins out there ringing doorbells (I’d assume).
In the video, the black bear is literally nosey, using its nose to really check out the Ring doorbell camera, and accidentally trigging the doorbell. The sound of the doorbell ringing alarms the bear a little bit, making its ears go back and causing it to scan the front door afterwards.
Maybe it was just waiting for someone to open the door after it politely went through the motions of letting them know it was there? I guess there’s a chance we aren’t’ giving the bear’s intelligence enough credit.
It seems like bears are figuring out different and unique ways to steal trash nowadays, and based on this footage, they might just start asking for the trash right at the door.
But getting back to the clip, the black bear closely investigates the doorbell once more, even using its sharp claws to paw at the device. It only gets back down on all fours and runs away when a dog that was inside the home starts barking.
The California homeowner said that seeing bears in the area is not out of the ordinary (there were even a couple other bears in the background of this video), but this was the first time he had one try to invite itself into his home.
I don’t know how I would have reacted if I checked my Ring app and saw a bear at my front door. Actually, I do know…my home would have gone into a “shelter in place” order until the bears vacated the premises.
The video was shared by ABC7 Eyewitness News with the caption:
“A bear-y curious visitor rang the doorbell at a home in Yucaipa before scurrying away in a case of ding-dong ditch.”
