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A man in California spent more than a month dealing with a bear that decided to set up shop in the crawlspace under his home around Thanksgiving. He was on the verge of suing the state for failing to help him remove it, but the saga came to an end before the matter went to court thanks to experts who used some unconventional methods to bring it to an end.
It’s been around a year since a series of devastating wildfires swept through Southern California and caused tens of billions of dollars worth of damage while temporarily and permanently displacing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Altadena was heavily impacted by the Eaton Fire, and what was already a stressful year for some residents became even more hectic due to the bear problems they found themselves treated to.
One man who returned to his home last January after he was forced to evacuate was greeted by a bear that had burrowed under it while he was gone, and while the California Department of Fish and Wildlife didn’t have a ton of trouble removing and relocating the animal, the same cannot be said for the tagged behemoth known as “Yellow 2120.”
Kenneth Johnson discovered that bear lurking under his home toward the end of November, and it spent weeks resisting removal efforts until some experts were able to bring his nightmare to an end.
Volunteers used paintballs and an electrified mat to successfully evict a bear that had spent six weeks living under a home in California
Johnson realized the bear in question had invaded his domain when he set up a camera that captured the 550-pound animal making its way into the crawlspace on November 24th.
He contacted the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which dispatched some employees who launched an unsuccessful effort to lure it out. That included the deployment of a trap that did manage to lure in a bear in December, but it was not the one that they were actually targeting.
The 63-year-old homeowner said he was tormented by the presence of the bear he could hear causing damage under the floorboards, and he found himself without any hot water right before Christmas after he was forced to shut off his gas upon seeing a pipe it had damaged.
Johnson said he was considering taking the state to court to force them to finish the job after accusing officials of abandoning him (they denied those claims). However, that won’t be necessary after he got an assist from BEAR League, a Lake Tahoe-based non-profit that specializes in coming up with non-lethal solutions to issues like the one he was facing.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the organization sent some volunteers to his house on January 6th, and it only took them around 10 minutes to force the bear out after shooting it with paintball guns filled with vegetable oil.
A camera captured the bear beating a fairly hasty retreat as well as the moment it did the same after stepping on an electrified mat that was set up to prevent it from returning to underneath the house.
Well played.