Apparently people aren’t the only ones relying on alcohol and sugar to survive the coronavirus pandemic and quarantine. Two women had the fright of their lives when the scariest intruders broke into their cabin, seemingly ready to party it up.
Michelle Eberhart, her husband and another couple had sought refuge and solace at a mountain cabin in Gatlinburg, Tenn. The husbands were off golfing while the wives stayed inside and relaxed.
They were chatting, enjoying the peace and quiet of nature surrounding them, when suddenly Michelle realized her friend was freaking out.
“She just looked up and she was kind of making some motion and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. So I kind of moved a little bit and saw what she was freaking out about.”
A bear with a sweet tooth and hankering for a beer had somehow busted through a locked door and barged into their cabin. It brought along three other friends who remained on the lookout on the front porch for a bit.
Michelle and her pal sprinted upstairs and hid in a bedroom, listening to the bear lumber around the cabin downstairs. At one point, a second bear meandered into the cabin and checked things out.
“It knocked over the trash, it knocked over a book and it destroyed a couple of decks of cards and it scratched up a lot of stuff. There were scratches on walls and the floor.”
While ransacking the home, the bear inhaled a ton of candy and snacks that had been sitting out on the kitchen counter. It also stole some of the goodies when they all left, including five pounds of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a pound of M&M’s, two pounds of Sour Patch Kids, two bags of potato chips, a tub of peanut butter pretzels and two bags of Dove salted caramel candy.
Sensing they might become thirsty, the bears swiped two beers, two Diet Cokes and strangely enough, Michelle’s allergy medicine. So now the bears were full of sugar, alcohol and pseudoephedrine.
Michelle reached out to the rental cabin’s owner who called police while the women remained hidden. When an officer arrived and opened the door, it startled the bear.
The critter dashed out of the house and leaped off a balcony!
The officer shoed away the other three bears and temporarily fixed the door so it would stay locked until it could be permanently repaired.
After the frightening incident, Michelle spied 11 more bears the day after. There also were scratch marks along the side of the house where the bears had climbed up and knocked over a grill.
When they heard yet another bear trying to bust into the house the following day, her husband scared it off.
“I did not sleep at all. It was very nerve-wracking.”
They weren’t about to hang around any longer, so they headed back home to Indiana in the early morning hours.
While Michelle said they never left any food out to entice the bears, Matthew Cameron with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency told CNN that it is rare for bears to invade homes, but it does happen.
“Unfortunately, this lack of available, natural food drives some bears to seek out human foods and engage in nuisance behavior. This aggressive behavior will continue until the summer berries begin to ripen, but that’s still over a month away.”
Because of the incident, authorities set out traps for the bears with the intention of relocating them.
“There is no ‘Stay at Home Order’ for wildlife during this pandemic and black bears are very active right now due to the lack of available, natural food sources.”
What a stomachache these bears probably had after consuming all that candy! Watch their adventures in the video below. It’s as wild as they are!
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