A family in Lake Tahoe, California, was carrying on one November day when they suddenly heard a strange and loud noise from their crawl space from below their house.
And after listening closely, they determined there was a massive bear in their crawlspace after accidentally leaving it unlocked.
The couple quickly called BEAR League, which is a group that regularly handles these types of situations.
“Crawl spaces are perfect because they’re cave-like,” Executive director of BEAR League, Ann Bryant, shared with The Dodo. “They’re dark, they’re quiet, they’re dry, they’re safe — they’re just absolutely perfect, so if a bear finds an opening, they go in and go, ‘Oh wow, this is great!’ In the winter we deal with it pretty much every day.”
Bryant then promised the couple she would head out there the very next day and help move the bear to a different spot but as the day continued on, the couple stopped hearing sounds, so they believed the bear had moved out and so the husband closed the door to the crawl space.
But that was not the end of this story, as it turns out, the bear was still there.
“During the night he [the husband] heard him and he was horrified because he realized, ‘Oh no, I locked him in there,’” Bryant said.
The family felt horrible that they had left the bear under their house but thankfully, Bryant came first thing the very next day to help get him out again.
And as Bryant deals with these situations on the daily, she knew just what to do. She discovered another entrance to the crawl space and managed to get herself behind the bear where he could not see her and used a special tool to create loud noises to attempt and scare the bear out of the crawl space. She then told the wife to watch from the window and yell when the bear came out but the bear decided not to move.
So Bryant decided to go outside to figure out why exactly he had not come out yet — which was exactly the moment when the bear decided to leave.
“He poked his head out and I said, ‘He’s coming out!’ I backed out enough so the bear wasn’t afraid of me,” Bryant said. “He stood there first wondering, ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ And then he ran!”
Bryant was thankful she was able to help him get back on his journey.