Don’t try to tell a bear that it can “bearly” fit.
What would you do if you knew that a 400-plus pound apex predator was loitering just a couple of feet below where you sleep? An Altadena, California homeowner is currently facing that very problem. Ken Johnson has a massive black bear living underneath his house, and as of right now, it’s still there.
The “Golden State” resident originally wasn’t too worried about the bear in his neighborhood. The large wild animal has been frequently spotted in Altadena, as Johnson explained to NBC4 News:
“(The bear) comes by every three months or so. Just walks up one driveway, walks down the other.”
Johnson only became concerned when he stopped seeing the big ol’ beast lumbering around his house.
And the worrying really started up when the man noticed that the entrance to his home’s crawlspace was ripped up, creating a small opening for something to crawl inside if it so chose. But Johnson wasn’t worried about a bear being in his crawlspace, because in his mind, the entrance wasn’t large enough for a bear to enter:
“When I saw it all torn up, I thought, ‘He must not be under there,’ because there is no way a bear could fit.”
In order to get to the bottom of it, Ken Johnson set up a camera outside the crawlspace to catch whatever was going in and out on film. Soon after, the California homeowner caught the culprit bear-handed:
“Monday night, my camera went off and there he was coming up the driveway, knocking over the trash. And the next morning, there he is crawling out from under the crawlspace.”
And the video of the bear crawling in and out of the comically small crawlspace hole is hilarious.
That being said, a close encounter that Johnson had with his new, downstairs neighbor was no laughing matter. The man has been treading lightly on his own property, and uses the trail camera to know when the coast is clear. At one point, the batteries in the camera died, so he went out to replace them and came face-to-face with the bear:
“I went around to put batteries in the camera, and this huge growl comes from out from under the crawlspace and I just went running. I mean, it was the most amazing roar you’ve ever heard. Like a lion with a hiss on top of it.”
Terrifying.
Johnson has contacted the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and asked for assistance in solving his bear problem. It’s somewhat of a tricky situation though. A bear that large can be hard to immobilize with a tranquilizer, so there might not be a solution to the situation other than waiting for the wild animal to leave on it’s own.
The homeowner added that all law enforcement has guided him (and his cat) to do is stay inside their house:
“It is hilarious. I mean, I’m taking the lighter side of it, but it’s also worrying me a little bit having something so big and ferocious living right there! It’s kind of weird.”
You can check out the video of the bear squeezing itself in and out of the California home’s crawlspace below:
