A Connecticut couple found a bear eating in their kitchen. It came back the next day.
A couple caught a hungry black bear helping itself to a meal inside their Connecticut home, CBS New York reports.
Bill Priest, of West Hartford, walked into his kitchen Sunday and found the intruder.
He said he grabbed a chair to put between him and the animal. He eventually got the bear out through the front door, but not before it ate an entire bag of marshmallows and other snacks, the station reported.
"He did startle me. That was probably the one time I was scared," Priest said. "He had everything on the floor in there eating."
Priest's wife, Christine Vannie, told WFSB that before the incident, she and her husband had just gone to the back yard on when her husband went inside to grab a drink.
They had outdoor music playing, so they didn't hear anything out of the ordinary — until Priest walked into the kitchen.
"It took some convincing to get him to leave," she wrote on social media. "I share this because most bears are shy and this one was not."
This just happened today!! DEEP has advised us.
Posted by Christine Vannie on Sunday, July 31, 2022
Priest said the bear came back the next day and ripped a screen trying to get inside.
Last week, he also saw a bear going through a fridge in his garage.
Vannie told WFSB she contacted the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which dropped off a trap. The department is going to try to catch the bear, sedate it and then tag it.
Black bears are becoming increasingly common in Connecticut as the population continues to grow and expand, according to the state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. In 2019, approximately 7,300 bear sightings from 150 of the state's 169 towns were reported to the agency's wildlife division.