Nobody likes uninvited guests, especially not an uninvited bear in your living room.
Kate Rice heard some banging in her living room in Rossland, BC, at 1 a.m. last Saturday.
She didn’t think much of it, since her nine-year-old daughter was having a sleepover with a friend in the next room.
As the banging intensified, she realized there was a bear in her living room.
Rice ran and barricaded herself in her daughter’s room with her dog and the two children. She then called the police.
“He was in the room next to us which he tore up. We could hear him breathing on the door we were holding. It was quite an incident,” Rice said.
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In a statement, the RCMP said officers had to force open the front door, which “freed the bear that was ultimately trapped inside the home.”
Fortunately, no one was injured. But how the bear entered the house remains a mystery.
“We don’t know where it got in, but all the doors were locked… I don’t have any big windows that a bear could fit through,” Rice said.
Rice describes the damage to her home as “a total disaster.” She said the plants were turned upside down and cracked the basement floor and drywall. The bear, she added, urinated on the floor. Fortunately, Rice said all costs would be covered by insurance.
“It was really overwhelming to see all the damage. And then also just taking into account what could have happened, because the kids had previously asked to sleep downstairs, and I said no,” Rice explained.
RCMP Sgt. Mike Wicentowich said in a statement that the family “did the right thing at the right time” and asked people to secure potential food sources to “help prevent these types of incidents.”
For Lisa Lopez, program manager for WildsafeBC, these circumstances don’t happen often.
“[This] indicates that this bear is very comfortable in the community and in these living spaces,” she said.
Lopez also advises citizens to check out anything with strong odors near their home, including pet food, bird feeders and barbecue grills.
The Rice family is now in Edmonton and expects to return to Rossland sometime next week to complete home restorations with the help of their friends and family and the Rossland community.
‘I’m just glad everything is OK. We also have two cats and a dog. No one was injured. It’s pretty amazing that way,” Rice said.
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