los angeles — Ken Johnson, 63, got a new roommate last week, a black bear who lives in the crawl space beneath his Southern California home.
The bear was seen in video footage climbing under his house on Tuesday. He had installed a camera near the space last June when he saw what looked like damage caused by an animal.
Nothing showed up on camera until last week. Now he’s trying to figure out how to make him leave.
“It’s a huge teddy bear,” Johnson said, describing it as tall as a table and larger than the trash cans in front of his house. “It’s really worrying because I don’t know if it’s going to tear everything up in there, and I don’t know how to get it out.”
Johnson lives in Altadena, an unincorporated community northeast of Los Angeles that was devastated by the Eaton Fire in January. The fire killed at least 19 people and burned thousands of buildings, but it also destroyed the Angeles National Forest. Wildlife displacement From their natural habitat and destroying their food supplies.
Shortly after the fire, at least two bears were found taking refuge in people’s evacuated homes in Altadena. State officials removed a massive 525-pound (240-kilogram) teddy bear from the crawl space under a man’s home in January because utility crews couldn’t get in to restore its strength.
The state agency wrote on social media that the bear was too large to be tranquilized, so employees from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife set a trap for the bear before transporting it to the Angeles National Forest to release it with a tracking collar. In February, another homeowner found himself with an unwelcome roommate, taking photos of a bear hanging out by the pool and bringing food to the crawl space at night. The Los Angeles Times reported.
“In the foothills of the Bear Mountains, it is important to seal crawl spaces with bear-resistant materials prior to the winter months to discourage bears from prowling and damaging property,” CDFW wrote on social media after that incident.
Although it is not cold enough in Southern California for bears to hibernate, they engage in a behavior called “denning,” where they take long naps but may periodically emerge to eat.
Since Tuesday, Johnson’s bear has come and gone from his home several times. He could hear “all kinds of clicking and buzzing” under the floorboards, and the bear rummaged through his litter boxes Sunday evening before returning to his chosen home.
It has dark brown fur with a tan nose and two tan markings on its chest. Other neighbors had seen the same bear in the area before and named it Barry, although Johnson said he didn’t know if the bear was male or female.
Johnson contacted local law enforcement regarding the bear after it growled at him while he was changing his camera batteries. They asked him to contact state officials, but he was eventually directed to fill out an online form to report the bear sighting. He checked the “property damage” box and wrote: “She lives under my house.”
So far he has not received a response.
Field experts are working on two more bear incidents in the area and hope to be able to respond to Johnson “soon,” CDFW spokesman Kurt Kloping said Monday afternoon. He confirmed that the yellow mark on the bear’s ear indicates that it is affiliated with the state agency, not federal.
Bears in crawlspaces are common this time of year, Kloping said, and teams likely respond to five such incidents in a week.
Johnson said if the bear wasn’t removed soon, he might have to take matters into his own hands.
“The plan is I’m going to buy a bunch of dinner rolls, line them up the street to the pit, and get some sandbags ready,” Johnson said. “When he comes into the street to get dinner rolls, you throw sandbags in there and cover them with pepper spray, and I just hope he stays away.”