A couple of days ago my son’s friend’s parents had a bit of a startle, and it was captured on their porch security camera. Here’s the sequence of what’s happening below:
- Bear wanders onto front porch.
- Bear knocks against front door, which occupants hear and believe to be a package delivery.
- Bear wanders down side of porch and out of sight just before occupants come outside to retrieve package.
- Seeing no package, occupants check the security footage on the phone to see what caused the noise. They are fascinated by the footage of the bear.
- With their backs turned. The bear is now coming back down the porch and sees its path blocked.
- Bear announces its presence (they said it “hissed” at them) and does a short “bluff charge,” which causes them to run into house.
- Bear casually walks away. No harm done.
And before someone on this thread weighs in about people encroaching on bear habitat, that’s absolutely not the case here. This house was built in the 1880s, and this part of the state is one of the very few areas in North America that wasn’t historically part of black bears’ range. They were first introduced to the local mountain range in the 1930s by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
