If you can’t bear the heat, get under the house.
That might’ve been the philosophy of a 525-pound male California black bear that an Altadena couple who’d fled the Eaton fire found hiding in the crawl space of their home.
The bear, known to locals as Barry, Beary, Berry or Victor (depending on who’s asking) was no stranger to the area. Homeowner Sam Arbid told news station KABC that he first laid eyes on the massive mammal in the crawl space after he bought the house a couple of months ago.
He told The Guardian that he learned a neighbor had been feeding Beary “for years” ― something wildlife experts pretty heavily discourage. Black bears naturally fear and avoid humans, but feeding them can make them too comfortable with people, leading to dangerous situations for both humans and bears.
Arbid and his family already had some interest in evicting Beary even before devastating fires broke out in the Los Angeles area last month. When the bear would go in and out of the crawl space, he’d sometimes bump into a pipe and send the family’s dogs into a frenzy.
The issue became more pressing when the family returned after evacuating from the fires. Utility workers needed to access the crawl space to turn the gas back on.
A bear taking shelter in a crawl space isn’t all that unusual for the area. Typically, state wildlife officials simply offer advice on how to encourage them to leave on their own, California Department of Fish and Wildlife environmental scientist Kevin Howells told The New York Times. But because of the need to restore utilities after the fire, Howells and a team of other department employees worked together to remove the bear.
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A crucial part of the operation was fixing a feast fit for a bear king. They ultimately lured Beary out of the crawlspace and into a trap with a spread that included apples and peanut butter, sardines with tomato sauce, and rotisserie chicken.
After Beary entered the trap, the team transported him to the Angeles National Forest, according to a Facebook post from CDFW. There, they gave him a “welfare check” before fitting him with a GPS collar for monitoring and releasing him into the wild.