The rare sight of a black bear was captured on security camera footage from a San Rafael home, and it's reportedly the second bear sighting in Marin County in the past month.
Here’s a hair-raising coincidence, at least the way NBC Bay Area describes it. At roughly 2 a.m. Tuesday morning, in the San Rafael neighborhood of Terra Linda, resident Caitlin Estrella was comforting her five-year-old daughter after the youngster had a nightmare that a bear was having a picnic near their home. And while she was calming her daughter, she received a security camera notification that there was in fact a black bear in her yard.
A snippet of that security camera footage can be seen above. “I was running around the house locking all the doors because, where my sister lives, the black bears open the door handles,” Estrella told NBC Bay Area. “I wasn’t going to take any chances.”
@MarinHumane @centralmarinpa Should people not be hiking in Madrone Canyon this week? pic.twitter.com/Z8Wt3YamhC
— Marin Native!!! (@ten8bike) May 29, 2023
This is reportedly the second bear sighting in Marin County in the last month, as the Bay Area News Group adds that a bear was spotted in Larkspur in May. Those two sightings were only about eight miles apart, so there is some possibility that it’s the same bear. NBC Bay Area says the bear “ate all of the red strawberries from their garden,” but did not eat any garbage, which bears will often do.
“Bears will eat anything,” Alison Hermance, director of communication for the wildlife hospital WildCare, told NBC Bay Area. “They’ll even lick outdoor BBQs and grills. Homeowners can help keep bears at bay by making sure their trash is sealed, bringing in bird feeders and pet food and even cleaning their outdoor grills.”
Residents of areas where bears might meander are also advised put trash out the day of collection and not the night before, and of course, to never feed the bears.
Related: It Ain’t Just Hank the Tank — DNA Shows At Least Four Different Bears Plundering Tahoe Homes [SFist]
Image: via Caitlin Estrella