A hungry brown bear entered a terrified woman's home and scoffed a chocolate cake before being chased out by police.
Footage taken by officers shows the bear being shooed off after breaking into a home in Simi Valley, California, US, after rummaging through the family's fridge.
Police responded to a call from a terrified mother who had locked herself in an upstairs bedroom with her son after the bear entered through the open kitchen door.
The mother threw the officers a key from a second storey window of the home, allowing them to enter.
Video shows the officers entering the house and shouting "hey bear! Get out of here bear!" before the startled animal fled and climbed over the garden fence.
The police had received a call from another resident the previous day after the bear was spotted in the area rummaging through trash-cans and cooling off in swimming pools.
The officers responded to the call with a non-lethal rubber projectile launcher, although it was not needed, as the bear immediately fled and climbed a tree as the officers entered.
The bear left the tree after approximately ten minutes and was cleared from the area.
Earlier this month The Mirror reported how a homeowner in South Carolina was shocked to discover that a black bear had approached her house and rung the doorbell in the early hours of the morning.
Wendy Watson of Greenville County, in the north-west part of South Carolina, found out that the animal had paid her a visit around 3.30am when she had been fast asleep in bed.
After striding onto the veranda of her home, the bear pressed his nose against the glass of her front door and then politely rang the bell to see if anyone was in, rather than attempting to bash the door down or gain entry by other means.
When no-one responded, he gave a little huff and strode off.
Wendy, though, had been none the wiser, only realising that she'd had a well-mannered visitor on her doorcam after noticing a couple of damaged bird feeders in the morning.
“It did not go ding-dong,” she said, in explanation of the bear’s impatience.
“I think I might’ve have screamed a little like ‘Oh my gosh!"
Wendy has since named the bear “Boo-Boo” and replaced her damaged bird-feeders.
Many took to Twitter to pass comment on the funny tale, with one person writing: “The new Netflix adaptation of Goldilocks looks good”.
Another person, meanwhile added: “Great, now someone is going to pull out the statistics on black bear crime.”
There are thought to be around 1,000 black bears in the state of South Carolina, with the majority of them living towards the western side near the heavily-forested southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains.
The rest can be found in the coastal areas, although they are more populous in North Carolina, with between 7,000 to 8,000 residing there.
