NEED TO KNOW
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The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is still on the lookout for a bear that has taken up residence in an Altadena home’s crawl space
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A trap set by the department did work — at catching a “non-target bear,” the department tells PEOPLE
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The 550-lb bear was caught on camera last month wiggling through the small entrance to the crawl space
California authorities are still on the hunt for a crawl space-dwelling bear after a bear trap caught the wrong suspect.
After months of trouble with a bear entering the crawl space underneath his house, Altadena resident Kenneth Johnson enlisted the help of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to catch the bear and remove it from his home, per CBS News Los Angeles. And the department did catch a bear — it just wasn’t the right bear.
Cort Klopping of California Fish and Wildlife tells PEOPLE, “A non-target bear was caught in the trap set out for Yellow 2120 (the bear under the house in Altadena) on Tuesday night. Our biologists processed, tagged and relocated the bear to a nearby suitable habitat on Wednesday. This does highlight the large population of bears in the San Gabriel Valley.”
Comparing footage of the bear entering the crawl space and the bear in the trap, California Fish and Wildlife determined they were two entirely different bears. The bear they’re on the lookout for is a 550-lb. bear of indeterminate species; the large bear appears to have brown fur, but wild brown bears aren’t found in the state of California, the department previously said.
The bear with an affinity for Johnson’s crawl space first started visiting his home in February, shortly after the widespread wildfires in Los Angeles were brought under control earlier this year. Johnson first noticed he had an uninvited guest when he saw the bricks outside the crawl space had been moved, and the wooden frame around the crawl space entrance had been broken.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Wrong bear in the bear trap.
Johnson discovered more damage in June, and thus installed a camera in his yard to determine the cause. In the footage, Johnson saw the huge bear making multiple, regular trips past the camera, but he couldn’t believe the bear could be the cause of the damage around the crawl space — it was simply too large.
“When I saw it all torn up, I thought, ‘He must not be under there,’ because there is no way a bear could fit,” Johnson told NBC Los Angeles. But in November, Johnson finally obtained footage of the bear weaseling its way into the crawl space.
“I don’t know how it got under there. It must be a contortionist. This thing is so big its stomach touches the ground,” Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s uncomfortable walking into the kitchen thinking there’s a bear over there. I don’t think he’s any harm to me as long as I don’t go down the side of the house while he’s coming out.”
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The only time Johnson has come close to the bear was when he was changing the camera’s batteries, he told local news outlet KTLA. He heard a growl and a hiss, he said, so he “just ran.”
Read the original article on People