ALTADENA, Calif. (KCAL/KCBS) – A 550-pound bear living under a California man’s home doesn’t seem to want to leave, not even falling for a sweet-scented trap that caught an entirely different bear.
Ken Johnson has been trying to coax a 550-pound California black bear from underneath his Altadena home for nearly a month. He’s now rigging his home with loud noises and fake dog barks, hoping to scare the bear away.
“I thought this would be over by now,” Johnson said. “It’s still going on, and there’s no sign of him leaving.”
The bear first wandered onto Johnson’s property at the end of November. Video shows it ripping out a screen and squeezing itself into a crawl space. Since then, the bear has come and gone and has even growled at Johnson as he got close to the crawl space.
As the weeks go by, it’s getting harder for Johnson to live in constant fear.
“You wake up in the middle of the night and hear this banging from underneath the house,” he said. “It’s just so unnerving.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is trying to help Johnson, but the agency’s most recent effort didn’t catch its intended target – but any entirely different bear.
CDFW biologists recently put a large metal cage bear trap on Johnson’s property near the crawl space where the bear is burrowing. It was sprayed with cherry and caramel scents, and last Tuesday, there was indeed a bear inside.
Unfortunately for Johnson, the bear turned out to be one that simply wandered onto his property and was trapped, not the squatter under his home.
Johnson is now back to square one. He has to wait and hope that the bear in his crawl space gets the hint this is not his forever home.
“This is very humbling. There’s a bear under my house, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said.
Officials with CDFW say this is the typical time of the year that bears find warm and safe places to den, which is likely why the bear has been in Johnson’s crawl space.
The other bear that was captured on Johnson’s property was released to a nearby suitable habitat, according to CDFW.
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