It was as brazen an act of “robbery” that has ever been seen especially since it was performed in front of the shocked “victims.
” The perps? A foursome of wild bears that had broken into the rental home of two women who were on vacation and made off with their food and drink.
Michelle Eberhart was with her friend and the pair were just hanging out at a mountain cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the afternoon of May 8 when a black bear managed to get through a locked door and break inside the house.
“She just looked up, and she was kind of making some motion and I couldn’t figure out what was going on,” Eberhart told CNN. “So I kind of moved a little bit and saw what she was freaking out about.”
Once they realized what had happened, Eberhart and her friend scuttled up the stairs to safety as the bear roamed the cabin. That was bad enough but the first bear was then joined by three friends and began circling the porch.
“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,” she said. “There were scratches on walls and the floor.”
They called the police and once they arrived, the bear inside the house ran out and jumped off a balcony, much like what a human burglar would’ve done. The other three bears were shooed away by the officers from the property.
In an interview with ABC affiliate WATE, Eberhart said that the bears made off with some of their supplies, including “5 pounds of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a pound of M&M’s and two pounds of Sour Patch Kids and two bags of potato chips.”
She added that the bears also took “two beers and two Diet Cokes,” and some of her allergy medicine.
“It was just almost surreal, it was just a fight-or-flight, like I just have to remove us from this situation and make sure that we’re at least in a safe place,” she said of the experience.
According to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, what Eberhart and her friend experienced was a rare occurrence.
“It’s really not typical bear behavior for them to come on to someone’s porch and start looking for food,” Matt Cameron, a spokesperson for the agency, said. “That means those bears have been around humans and have received handouts or have found a food source around a dwelling.”
Eberhart has shared a video of the encounter on her social media while emphasizing to local news station WBIR that she didn’t deliberately lure the bears onto the property.
“We didn’t do anything to encourage them and we would never do anything to encourage them. We really respect the wildlife,” she said. “Just really kind of shocked it all happened. We are extra cautious.”
Replaced!