When it’s time for a long winter’s nap, momma bears know what to do: They find a den.
It’s just this mother bear and her four cubs decided to hibernate under a Lake Tahoe home completely unbeknownst to the homeowners, who lived with them throughout the winter.
BEAR League, a non-profit group dedicated to bears and people live in harmony in the California community, recently shared the unconventional Goldilocks story on its Facebook page.
“It was a home where people lived and they thought they heard some odd rumbling, snoring-like noises but ignored it because it simply didn’t make sense,” the group explained. “And the neighbors said they were imagining it because they didn’t hear anything.”
This mother bear also happens to have an interesting backstory. She’s not only a mother, but a foster mother, too.
“Last year she had three cubs and when they were about 9 months old she adopted an orphan of the same age from her neighborhood,” BEAR League added. “Then she had four active, chubby little bears following her around.”
In any event, the family of five picked an unsecured crawl space with an opening under a house to go to sleep.
“Today the bear family awoke and prepared to exit and the people in the house could no longer deny there was probably a bear under the house,” the group wrote on April 23.
That’s when they called BEAR League to help exit the uninvited guest — not realizing there were four more bears under the house.
All were ushered safely away and the crawl space secured so no other bear thinks this is home for a rest.
“The story of the Mama Bear and her cubs under the house is gathering a lot of attention in the media,” it added. “Hopefully this will help encourage people to secure their crawl space openings.”
