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Five bears were recently discovered snoozing in a California home after making an unsecured crawl space their hibernation spot for winter. The human family who unwittingly shared the property with the bears were unaware of their presence until the mama bear and her four babies woke up earlier this month.
Do you live with a snorer? The noisy and often chronic problem can be difficult to manage, but what do you do when the source of the snoring appears to be coming from underneath the house? That was exactly the challenge the unnamed family in California found themselves faced with when their crawl space began snoring this past winter.
“It was a home where people lived and they thought they heard some odd rumbling, snoring-like noises but ignored it because it simply didn't make sense,” reported BEAR League on Facebook, “and the neighbors said they were imagining it because they didn't hear anything.”
The surprise lodgers became apparent when the bears finally woke up on April 20, 2022, and the human homeowners could no longer ignore the mysterious rumblings. They called in BEAR League to assist and after uninviting the mama bear the team was surprised to see just how many of the animals had moved in.
“The residents didn’t realize there were five bears under their house until we got there and told the bears to come out... and then we counted five," Executive Director for BEAR League Ann Bryant told HuffPost. “They had just thought it was one very noisy bear.”
While breaking and entering isn’t an idyllic situation when it comes to large apex predators, the human family can perhaps seek some solace in the fact that their home sheltered a hardworking mom for the winter. The female, known to BEAR League, had three cubs of her own last year but also adopted a fourth orphaned cub that was around the same age.
BEAR League hopes their story will remind others to ensure crawl spaces are secured before winter so that local bears will make better, more bear-family-friendly choices when picking a hibernation spot.
They also recently reported a sighting of Hank the Tank, who caused quite a stir after he was blamed for a string of bear break-ins in California. DNA evidence later exonerated the animal as it was revealed that at least three bears (unfortunately, not in a trench coat) were responsible for the incidents.
And if all of that isn’t enough to convince you to lock up securely next winter, remember: the chances of a bear breaking into your house and playing the piano are slim, but never zero.
[H/T: Guardian]
