PORT SANDFIELD —A Port Sandfield resident came home to a surprise visit from a bear on Saturday, July 7 — not once, but twice.
Beth Gardner came home around 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon to find her door open and muddy bear tracks in the house.
“I went in and the lid of the cat food container had been neatly removed, and not even spilled, but just nibbled,” she said.
She checked the bathroom next where she found dirt on the floor and an empty toilet bowl.
“I’m assuming that the bear drank it all,” she said.
The bear also found some bird seed in the living room.
“Again, he didn’t even make a big mess, he just tipped it over, ate some, then apparently left,” she said.
Gardner expects the bear visited sometime between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
“I had a house guest, and I think she must have left the screen door open when she left,” she said.
Gardner said she was nervous when she checked the living room, as it only has one entrance and she didn’t want to intimidate the bear. Fortunately the bear had cleared out before she came, but it didn’t stay away for long.
“I was going to go back to work at around 4 p.m. and I walked out of the house and there he was on the deck,” she said. He ran away and hasn’t been seen since.
Around 9 that morning, Gardner’s family, who lives just down the hill from her, saw the bear coming over the hill and got pictures of him.
Living on the lake by Port Sandfield, Gardner and her family have had bear encounters before, but not in the house. A few weeks ago, Gardner had a large animal flip a big rock off some garbage she’d put outside of her door and overturn the garbage. She assumes it was a bear.
“Most summers we see a bear at least once,” she said.
Her father said if the bear comes around again, they will call the MNR, which they’ve done in the past.
“He’s a cute little thing,” Gardner said. “He’s adorable, he wasn’t very big.”
He has made her nervous to walk in the dark though, especially with the long walk from her driveway to the house.
While Gardner is alert to any more bear visits, she’s not panicking.
He was young, she doesn’t think he’s in the habit, she said.