ALTADENA, Calif. (KCAL\/KCBS) – A 550-pound bear living under a California man\u2019s home doesn\u2019t seem to want to leave, not even falling for a sweet-scented trap that caught an entirely different bear.<\/p>\n
Ken Johnson has been trying to coax a 550-pound California black bear from underneath his Altadena home for nearly a month. He\u2019s now rigging his home with loud noises and fake dog barks, hoping to scare the bear away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought this would be over by now,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s still going on, and there\u2019s no sign of him leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bear first wandered onto Johnson\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
As the weeks go by, it\u2019s getting harder for Johnson to live in constant fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou wake up in the middle of the night and hear this banging from underneath the house,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just so unnerving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is trying to help Johnson, but the agency\u2019s most recent effort didn\u2019t catch its intended target \u2013 but any entirely different bear.<\/p>\n
CDFW biologists recently put a large metal cage bear trap on Johnson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is very humbling. There\u2019s a bear under my house, and there\u2019s nothing I can do about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s crawl space.<\/p>\n
The other bear that was captured on Johnson\u2019s property was released to a nearby suitable habitat, according to CDFW.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 KCAL\/KCBS via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALTADENA, Calif. (KCAL\/KCBS) – A 550-pound bear living under a California man\u2019s home doesn\u2019t seem to want to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[179293,179294,2356,79,179295,179296,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-364176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-bear-in-crawl-space","9":"tag-bear-living-under-house","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-trap-catches-wrong-bear","13":"tag-trap-doesnt-catch-bear","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}