Bear Enters House, Raids Fridge, and Eats Ben and Jerry's Feet Away from Freaked Out Teens
Two teens were greeted with a very unusual house guest Saturday night.
Fifteen-year-olds Hayes Sherman and Bobby Harden were watching TV at home around 12:30 a.m. in Truckee, California, when they heard someone making noise in the kitchen. They soon realized that what had snuck into the family cabin’s kitchen was a bear, CNN reported.
“I heard footsteps, and then I heard Tupperware being opened really loudly and aggressively,” Sherman told the outlet. “The fridge started to beep because it was open too long.”
“I was really scared. I wasn’t exactly sure of what to do. I was watching TV with my friend, and I turned the TV off. We both went to the sliding door to hold it in place so that the bear couldn’t get in.”
The bear was looking around the kitchen for food, opening the fridge until he found what he wanted to dine on that evening — all of which was captured on video by a Nest camera.
According to Hayes, the bear tore open a Tupperware to eat some taco meat, and also devoured two pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — choosing the flavors Half Baked and The Tonight Dough— as well as some crackers.
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While Hayes and Harden held the door shut, the bear bumped into it several times, shaking the door while trying to pry it open.
Hayes tried to alert his mother and cousin, who were upstairs sleeping during the incident, by calling her on his Apple watch, as the teens didn’t have their phones with them.
“I whispered to her, ‘Mom, there is a bear in the house. Don’t come downstairs,’ ” Hayes said before calling 911.
His mother called the community gate house to alert a security guard as well.
“It was very difficult, because I was whispering to 911 on my watch in a very dark room while trying to hold the door closed so the bear couldn’t get in,” Hayes said.
The police arrived in 13 minutes, and Hayes’ mother Susan Mohun said she had to resist running down to help her son.
“That is the worst-case scenario as a parent to have a bear between you and your children. I am glad that I didn’t run downstairs, because that probably would have just agitated the bear,” Mohun told CNN.
When Placer County Sheriff’s Deputy Allyson Prero arrived, after determining that the bear entered the home through an unlocked garage door, she opened the cabin’s front door and let the bear leave the house, according to the sheriff’s office.
“We came out, and we went to hug her, and we took a photo with her because we were just so grateful that she came to save us,” Hayes said.This wasn’t the Hayes’ first encounter with bears. He recalled hearing several stories of the animals coming into his gated community near Lake Tahoe, and just last year, more than a dozen window screens on his house were ripped off by bears. “We learned a very valuable lesson in bear country to always lock your windows, your doors, your garage doors and car doors,” he added.
