Don't say I didn't warn you

In 2009, a bear broke into a car in Colorado. Alerted by the car alarm and assuming a theft was in progress, the owners called the cops. When deputies arrived, they helpfully opened the car doors so the bear could escape.

In 2010, also in Colorado, officers didn't arrive till the bear had gotten a little further - this time it had driven the car out of the owner's driveway. These officers made sure to take photos to post on the Internet before, yes, opening the car doors so the bear could escape.

Now, it's happened again, in Lake Tahoe. Another bear managed to drive a car a short way, and this time, it got away on its own.

While the police in this recent case weren't active accomplices in the bear's escape - probably only because they didn't get the chance - they clearly took the incident just as lightly. A spokesman for the police department reportedly laughed when he said "Normally, you'll get reports of the Dumpster divers and trash divers, but bears breaking into cars is different."

And the owner of the car reportedly "had no clue why a bear would want to get inside his car," because there was no food inside.

People: Bears are teaching themselves to drive and you're not paying attention. When the bear army arrives, and you're surprised that they're in vehicles, don't say you weren't warned.



If only Patches was right that simple mauling was all we had to worry about.

Bad Bear Roundup

A grizzly that killed a camper near Yellowstone National Park this past week, convicted on the basis of DNA evidence, got the death penalty. The bear's cubs received a much lesser sentence of life in a zoo without parole.

However, this triumph of justice shouldn't distract us from the rash of lesser crimes committed by bears who have gone unpunished.

In Colorado, police received a call in the middle of the night about a car making a commotion, with the horn honking and something going on inside.

When the car's owners were awaked, they were surprised to find the vehicle missing from their driveway. They were even more surprised when they found that the thief was not human:

Somehow, the bear had either opened the unlocked back door or pushed a window down to get inside. Understandably agitated, it bumped into the horn repeatedly and eventually knocked the car's gear into neutral. The Toyota rolled down the hill. The door added to the bear's indignity by closing at some point during the ordeal.

Amazingly, three police authorities decided that the best thing to do was help the culprit escape. Being careful to take photos first, they tied a rope to the door and opened it from a safe distance. The bear thanked them in ways that will not surprise readers of this blog:

It left a foul-smelling "present" on the front seat.

The Toyota was trashed, with its air bags, seats and stereo torn to shreds. It's a total loss.

Don't be too quick to assume from those two stories that at least you're safe from bears inside your house. One family was fortunate to learn this lesson the easy way when a bear invaded their home for a meal and had second thoughts about abducting what he may have believed was a relative:

A New Hampshire mother said her two young sons learned an important lesson about leaving the outside door open after a black bear walked into their kitchen and ate two pears and a bunch of grapes and took a drink from the family fishbowl.

On its way out of the Laconia house, the real bear grabbed a stuffed bear, said resident Mary Beth Parkinson. The stuffed animal was found in the family's back yard, next to a box of Goldfish crackers.

Other animals were also fortunate not to suffer too badly from the family's lax security:

She said she arrived in time to save the fish.
"There was one fish left in here (and) one flipping on the counter," Parkinson said.

Photo of the only kind of bears that belong in a car by Flickr user Caro's Lines; cartoon via Houston Chronicle.

Car thief turns out to be a bear

There is nothing I can add to this headline, this photo, or this story from the Denver Post.

The car alarm was blaring, and there was a light moving around inside.

A couple in the Colorado Mountain Estates subdivision near Florissant thought someone was trying to steal their car early Wednesday.

When deputies from the Teller County Sheriff's Office responded at about 2:30 a.m., they discovered a young bear in the car.

The bear was as surprised to see the deputies as the deputies were to see the bear, said Mikel Baker, spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office.

One of the two deputies took some pictures of the bear, opened the car door, and the bear was gone in a flash, said Baker.

According to Baker and Teller County Sheriff Kevin Dougherty, this bear — like so many others — was very smart and had learned how to open car doors.

But as the bear rummaged around the car causing extensive damage, the door closed and it couldn't figure how to get out.

The light the couple saw moving in the car was the dome light of the vehicle, which momentarily wrapped around the bear's head, said Dougherty.

Baker said that bears are extremely hungry as they prepare for hibernation. No food should be left in a car, she said, as bruins, with their keen sense of smell, will detect the food and try to get inside.

In recent years, one bear practically destroyed a car after yogurt was left in it. Afterward, investigators found yogurt smeared throughout the car, said Baker.

Unclear expectations down under

If there's one thing that's important in training dogs (or any other animal), it's consistency. Maybe it's not their fault that dogs in New Zealand are going off the deep end if these two stories are any indication of how they enforce the laws around there.

One dog was given a parking ticket for being tied up outside a shop, an activity that even we here at this blog think is not much of a threat to the general peace.

But elsewhere, another dog drove a car into a store:

Wilco's owner had stopped his ute to buy beer, leaving the motor running. The dog jumped up on the column gear stick.

"Once Wilco had knocked it from park into drive, it would have been just a slow walking pace up to the front door," says (police constable) Chambers.

In the liquor store the beer had just gone on the counter.

"A lady...ran through the doors and said 'did you know that your dog's just driven through the cafe doors'. So yeah, we popped out there and it was definitely right, it was sitting in the driver's seat," says Terry Fox, store manager.

This dog was let off with only a warning! Is it any wonder animals have no idea how to behave? Sometimes, people, we have no one to blame but ourselves.