A Simsbury family had an unexpected and unwelcome houseguest on Sunday night when a bear broke into their home, rummaged through food, and left only after being scared off by police.<\/p>\n
The same bear returned the following morning, prompting wildlife officials to set a trap in hopes of capturing the bold intruder.<\/p>\n
Michele Lemis said the family had never experienced anything like it in their 23 years on Chriswell Drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe started at the front door of the house, came around\u2026broke my entire screen door,\u201d she said. \u201cWhipped the air conditioner out of the window, climbed in and out through the window.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemis had just pulled into her driveway around 6 p.m. Sunday when she noticed something was wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came home and noticed that the whole screen door was broken, the metal pieces bent,\u201d she said. \u201cI got out of the car to look a little closer and noticed that the air conditioner had been pulled from the window.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when she spotted the bear at the front door.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called the police, they were on their way, and the bear walked from the front door, right through the screen that he already broke, and I watched him climb through the side window of the breezeway into the house,” she said.<\/p>\n
Inside the home at the time was her 17-year-old daughter, Meilin Lemis, who was asleep. She called her to wake her up, and then called 911.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I heard was, ‘do not open your door, do not go out of the room at all,’\u201d Meilin recalled. \u201cI heard him walk down the hallway a little bit, and I just hear heavy breathing, and I\u2019m like, ‘oh boy.’\u201d<\/p>\n
As the bear moved closer to her bedroom, Meilin made a split-second decision to hide.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard it, went into this closet and\u2026just went right in like this and I closed it and I sat there for seven or so, 10 minutes,” she said.<\/p>\n
Those minutes, the high school senior said, felt much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was right at my door, and I was like, ‘please do not come in.’ He was sniffing around,” Meilin said.<\/p>\n
When Simsbury police arrived, the bear was spooked and ran into the woods.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The officer] just went, in a really deep voice, ‘Get out bear!’ All of a sudden, the bear\u2026came back out this window, went to the backyard, around, and broke the fence to get out and he was gone,” Lemis said.<\/p>\n
The bear helped itself to snack, Lemis said, and left behind a mess.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe ate a jar of mayonnaise, Nutella, took my new crunchy grapes from Costco that I hadn\u2019t even eaten yet, the entire tin of grapes, and then took a chicken roast out of the refrigerator, but never touched it,\u201d Lemis said.<\/p>\n
The next morning, the bear returned as Lemis was getting ready for work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look out the bay window, and the bear is there again at my front door trying to get in,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I heard that again, I\u2019m like ‘no, there\u2019s no way he\u2019s back,’ and to be that assertive, to shake that front door.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concerned about their safety, with paw prints still on their floor and doors, the family is on edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been captured before. He\u2019s never entered a house. But I said, I\u2019m not comfortable with this bear knowing how to get into my house. I have a dog, I have a family,\u201d Lemis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said if they relocate, he\u2019ll end up coming back. If I had gotten the tag number yesterday and it matched the tag number today, they would be able to euthanize it just because it entered a house. But not knowing it\u2019s the same bear, they\u2019re not sure they want to do that,” she added.<\/p>\n
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has since placed a large bear trap in the family\u2019s front yard, baited with donuts, hoping to lure the bear back and safely remove it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a lot really happens in Simsbury, but I guess when you\u2019ve got bears that are hungry, they\u2019ll come, and they definitely do,\u201d Meilin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Simsbury family had an unexpected and unwelcome houseguest on Sunday night when a bear broke into their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":248302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,131861,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-248301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-simsbury","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115252345179757976","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}