Five bears were spotted sleeping in a California home after hibernating in an unprotected crawl passage for the winter. The human family that unintentionally shared the land with the bears had no idea until the mom bear and her four youngsters awoke earlier this month that they were there. Do you share your home with a snorer? Snoring is a noisy and frequently persistent problem, but what should you do if the source of the snoring appears to be coming from beneath the house? When their crawl space started snoring this past winter, the anonymous family in California was faced with just that problem.
“It was a residence where folks resided and they felt they heard some strange rumbling, snoring-like noises but dismissed it since it didn’t make sense,” BEAR League said on Facebook, “and the neighbors stated they were imagining it because they didn’t hear anything.” When the bears eventually awoke on April 20, 2022, the human residents could no longer ignore the unexplained rumblings. They enlisted the help of BEAR League, and after evicting the mom bear, the crew was taken aback by how many animals had moved in.
“The occupants had no idea there were five bears beneath their house until we arrived and urged the bears to come out… and then we counted five,” BEAR League Executive Director Ann Bryant told HuffPost. “They just assumed it was one really boisterous bear,” says the narrator. While breaking and entering isn’t ideal for huge apex predators, the human family may take comfort in the thought that their house provided refuge for a hardworking mother for the winter. Last year, the mother, who is known to BEAR League, produced three cubs of her own but also adopted a fourth orphaned cub of the same age.
BEAR League hopes that by sharing their experience, people will remember to lock crawl spaces before winter so that local bears may make better, more bear-family-friendly decisions when choosing a hibernating location.
They also reported seeing Hank the Tank, who made headlines after he was implicated for a number of bear break-ins in California. DNA evidence eventually exonerated the bear, revealing that at least three bears (not in trench coats, regrettably) were responsible for the occurrences. If all of this isn’t enough to persuade you to safeguard your home next winter, keep in mind that the possibilities of a bear getting in and playing the piano are minimal, but not zero.
