A Canadian dad has snapped this picture of a 43-stone black bear standing on his son’s gaming chair after it let itself into the family’s house through a bedroom window.
Sean Reddy, whose house was invaded by a giant black bear, told Newsflash that on 4th October he was cleaning up his garden because a bear had made a mess and knocked over the bins the night before.
As he walked around his garden in Alberta, Canada, his two dogs both suddenly became very agitated.
Sean said he recognised the dogs’ behaviour as they displayed it before when there was a bear nearby.
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The dogs soon had the bear cornered near the garage, but Sean shouted at them to back off as the 600-lb (42.9-stone) animal could have seriously injured them.
He said: “The bear did not seem too fazed by my dogs and I was yelling at them to call them back so as not to get killed by the bear.
“I locked them [the dogs] in my shop and closed the door to leave the bear alone.”
The bear then made its way into the garage where it got its paws on dog food and some items in the freezer.
Sean told his children, Ronan and Cormac, to stay inside and not go anywhere near the garage as it was occupied by a hungry bear.
The family watched the bear from their window and assumed that after finishing the food it would head back into the woods.
Minutes later Cormac, 10, asked his dad what all the scratching he could hear coming from the other end of the house was.
Ronan then shouted to his dad, saying the bear was now in the hallway.
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“I went in to see and sure enough there it was. I don’t remember what I said or if I was yelling at the bear, but that’s when he walked into Cormac’s room.”
Sean thought a window was open in the room so he shut the door and hoped that the bear would leave the same way it came in.
He rushed outside to check if the window really was open only to find that it was shut.
“Now just realising that I had locked the bear in Cormac’s room, I ran back into the house to see and went down the hallway to find out my son Liam had left his bedroom window wide open and that’s where the bear had come in.”
Sean said the bear had climbed through Liam’s room, across his bed, and then wandered through the house to Cormac’s room.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, thinking the bear was going to be p*ssed off at me for being locked in the room.”
With RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and Fish and Wildlife officials unreachable, Sean was left to his own devices when it came to removing the bear from his son’s bedroom.
He called his neighbour Chris who came over with some anti-bear spray.
“We decided to get a bunch of furniture ready to block off the hallway, there is a bookshelf by Cormac‘s bedroom which I had pulled back thinking at least if I opened up the door and a mad bear was coming out I had a bookshelf between us.”
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However, when he opened the bedroom door the bear did not show itself.
“I climbed over the small bookshelf to look in, and the bear was at the computer desk looking back at me as if to say ‘what do you want?’”
He added: “That’s when I said to the guys here ‘I have to take a picture because no one will believe me!’”
The bear walked across the hallway back towards the bedroom and left shortly after Sean took the picture of it by his son’s gaming chair.
The bear has not been seen since, but Sean says that bear sightings are not uncommon near the family’s home although normally they keep to the garden and the garage.
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Story By: Peter Barker, Sub-Editor: Lee Bullen, Agency: Newsflash
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