Last November, I’d been out for the evening with friends who were visiting Los Angeles. Afterwards, I checked the notifications on my phone. There was a motion alert from one of the cameras around my house. It had captured a big black bear nosing around my bins.
We get wildlife here: raccoons, skunks. But I’d never had a bear rummaging through my trash. I watched as it turned things over, then wandered off. I assumed he had left.
The next morning, I checked the critter-cams and saw the bear again, now captured by a camera I’d placed by a little mesh-covered opening near the small basement under my house. I watched as a massive shape emerged from the hole. My brain refused to believe it. The bear looked too large to fit in that tiny gap. I watched it again, shocked. My hands started to sweat.
I scrolled back through the footage. There he was, hours earlier, pushing his body into my home. That evening, I showed the clips to a few friends, who laughed and swore. One said, “Ken, you’ve got to do something about this.”
The next day, I watched the bear come out in the early morning – then that camera died. I went around to change the batteries. I heard this huff, then a stomp. A growl that felt like a death warning. I glimpsed him, and my body went straight into fight-or-flight. I ran back inside my house, started shaking and couldn’t stop.
After that, my life split into two. There was ordinary life – making coffee, feeding my indoor cat, Boo – and life with the bear. I monitored the cameras, wondering what was happening beneath me. It was as if I was the guy in the upstairs apartment and he the tenant below. Boo would hear banging under the floor and go running, then look at me with wide eyes as if to say: are you hearing this?
I tried everything people suggested: stomping, blasting music, creating “bad neighbour fratboy energy” – all to make the bear leave. Nothing worked. If anything, he seemed to settle in deeper. My imagination got dramatic. I’d hear a scrape and wake up at five in the morning in a panic.
When the Department of Fish and Wildlife got involved, the situation got more serious and more absurd. They set up a bear trap in my neighbour’s driveway and laid a scent trail that smelled like sardines and cherries. It didn’t work, so they switched to butterscotch. I cannot tell you how haunting butterscotch becomes when you associate it with a 550lb (250kg) bear living under your floor. I’d open a window and my stomach would turn.
The bear, meanwhile, was not being lured anywhere. He’d come out at night for a while, circle the patio, hunt for food, then squeeze back under my house. Watching him force himself through that gap was painful. His belly scraped. His body contorted. Every time, the last thing to disappear was his enormous paw.
I had prepared a wooden panel to block the opening, but it was too dangerous to fit it when he was nearby. Once, when I did get it in place, he just swatted it aside.
Before long, the media showed up, and the neighbourhood came alive. People wandered over to reporters and said things like, “Oh yeah, he was in our yard last week.” Or, “He tipped over our trash.” And I’d think, “Then he came back and crawled under my house.” Locally, he’s known as “Unbearable” or “Volkswagen” because he’s the size of one.
Then, a few weeks ago, we did the impossible. Some guys from the organisation Bear League actually crawled into the space with him and scared him out using paintball guns with pellets made of vegetable oil. It sounds painful, but the bear has thick skin, and it did the trick.
Now that he’s gone, I have mixed feelings. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve also assessed the damage to my house, and it’s bad. He’s made two craters under there – which explains the thick dust around the vents in the house. We’ve covered the opening with an electrified mat so he can’t come back.
He had a great set-up for a while, but he’d made a mess and overstayed his welcome. If I win the lottery, I’ll build him his own bear cave out in the yard, but until then, he’s officially evicted.
• As told to Sophie Haydock
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