An ice cream bear jamboree was broken up by El Dorado County Sheriff’s deputies in South Lake Tahoe early Sunday morning, but not before that bear put a serious dent in the strawberry ice cream supply.
It remains the height of bear season in the Lake Tahoe area, and as always, people are advised to absolutely never feed the bears human food. After all, they’re pretty good at rummaging around for their own human food. The Chronicle reports on an amusing example of this, as in the wee hours of this past Sunday morning, a black bear broke into the Ice Cream Shop at South Lake Tahoe’s Camp Richardson. And as you would guess, that bear sauntered behind the counter and unapologetically helped themselves to the ice cream.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office was called to the scene. “The deputies could barely believe their eyes as they saw a large bear behind the counter of the shop,” that office said in a Monday Facebook post. “With some encouragement, the bear ultimately left, but only after showing interest in the strawberry ice cream.”
No one was injured, and the bear did not cause any damage, short of relieving the shop of some delicious strawberry ice cream.
I scream with laughter over this particular incident, but the brazenness of bears has been a serious and escalating problem in the Lake Tahoe region for the last several summers. The Chronicle points out that just this year alone, a separate South Lake Tahoe bear had to be euthanized after years of home break-ins and aggressive behavior, and a separate mama bear is currently under watch because she’s teaching her little cub how to break into homes.
You may recall the yearslong saga of Hank the Tank (actually a female) whose rap sheet grew to nearly two dozen Tahoe area break-ins between 2021 and 2023 before she was captured. There have even been cases of bears stalking specific humans, and the side effect that more bears are being hit by cars.
So things remain complicated in the human-bear dynamic in Lake Tahoe, and there's no reason to think we won't see bears making themselves more and more comfortable in human environs around those parts.
Related: Big Ol’ Black Bear Makes Self Right At Home In Marin County Front Yard [SFist]
Image: El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office via Facebook
