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CCTV footage showing the bear coming out of Johnson’s basement<\/p>\nLast November, I\u2019d been out for the evening with friends who were visiting Los Angeles. Afterwards, I checked the notifications on my phone. There was a motion alert from one of the cameras around my house. It had captured a big black bear nosing around my bins.<\/p>\n
We get wildlife here: raccoons, skunks. But I\u2019d never had a bear rummaging through my trash. I\u00a0watched as it turned things over, then wandered off. I assumed he had left.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I checked the critter-cams and saw the bear again, now captured by a camera I\u2019d placed by a little mesh-covered opening near the small basement under my house. I\u00a0watched as a massive shape emerged from the hole. My brain refused to believe it. The bear looked too large to fit in that tiny gap. I watched it again, shocked. My hands started to sweat.<\/p>\n
CCTV footage showing the bear coming out of Johnson’s basement<\/p>\n
I scrolled back through the footage. There he was, hours earlier, pushing his body into my home. That evening, I\u00a0showed the clips to a few friends, who laughed and swore. One said, \u201cKen, you\u2019ve got to do something about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next day, I watched the bear come out in the early morning \u2013 then that camera died. I went around to change the batteries. I heard this huff, then a stomp. A growl that felt like a\u00a0death warning. I glimpsed him, and my body went straight into fight-or-flight. I ran back inside my house, started shaking and couldn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
After that, my life split into two. There was ordinary life \u2013 making coffee, feeding my indoor cat, Boo \u2013 and life with the bear. I monitored the cameras, wondering what was happening beneath me. It was as if I\u00a0was the guy in the upstairs apartment and he the tenant below. Boo would hear banging under the floor and go running, then look at me with wide eyes as if to say: are you hearing this?<\/p>\n
The bear walking around Johnson\u2019s house, past the column he partially demolished<\/p>\n
I tried everything people suggested: stomping, blasting music, creating \u201cbad neighbour fratboy energy\u201d \u2013 all to make the bear leave. Nothing worked. If anything, he seemed to settle in deeper. My imagination got dramatic. I\u2019d hear a scrape and wake up at five in the morning in a panic.<\/p>\n
When the Department of Fish and Wildlife<\/a> got involved, the situation got more serious and more absurd. They set up a\u00a0bear trap in my neighbour\u2019s driveway and laid a scent trail that smelled like sardines and cherries. It didn\u2019t work, so they switched to butterscotch. I\u00a0cannot tell you how haunting butterscotch becomes when you associate it with a 550lb (250kg) bear living under your floor. I\u2019d open a\u00a0window and my stomach would turn.<\/p>\n The bear, meanwhile, was not being lured anywhere. He\u2019d come out at night for a while, circle the patio, hunt for food, then squeeze back under my house. Watching him force himself through that gap was painful. His belly scraped. His body contorted. Every time, the last thing to disappear was his enormous paw.<\/p>\n I\u2019d hear a scrape and wake up at five in the morning in a panic<\/p>\n I had prepared a wooden panel to block the opening, but it was too dangerous to fit it when he was nearby. Once, when I did get it in place, he just swatted it aside.<\/p>\n Before long, the media showed up, and the neighbourhood came alive. People wandered over to reporters and said things like, \u201cOh yeah, he was in our yard last week.\u201d Or, \u201cHe tipped over our trash.\u201d And I\u2019d think, \u201cThen he came back and crawled under my house.\u201d Locally, he\u2019s known as \u201cUnbearable\u201d or \u201cVolkswagen\u201d because he\u2019s the size of one.<\/p>\n