Originally published in The Hartford Courant
Last summer, a Falls Village resident came out of the bathroom and found a black bear in her kitchen. The opportunistic bear opened the fridge, grabbed some chicken and strolled back out the magnetic screen door to the backyard, where it ate its meal before sauntering off. The resident recognized the bear—it had previously helped itself to fruit from her three-dozen fruit trees.
In June, while Salisbury homeowners were napping upstairs, a sow pushed through a screened in porch and entered the kitchen through a door left wide open. The sow rummaged through cabinets to access honey, croutons and chocolate before swiping two small pies from the counter. The homeowners found her outside sharing her bounty with her three cubs.
Then in Avon, workers left a kitchen door open a crack to help paint dry and left for lunch. A sow took a bag of brown sugar and powdered sugar to her cubs waiting patiently outside.
In Hartland, a bear entered a house through a door left open by homeowners who had been grilling on their deck and then went inside to eat. When the bear was discovered, the homeowner yelled, and the bear ran back out the open door—it kept running until it reached the woods.
These are just a sampling of the bear home entry reports from 2023 and 2024 obtained from the state Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection through a Freedom of Information Act request.
They reveal that Connecticut doesn’t have a black bear problem. The state has a problem with residents leaving windows open—screens don’t keep bears out—as well as doors unlocked and wide open.
t’s a different narrative than recent headlines about record numbers of home entries by black bears that stoke fear among the public instead of educating. Of the 39 home entries from April 8—June 30, 2024, most were avoidable if residents had followed just a few easy steps to secure their homes and property.
I live in Darien, and it reminds me of when there was a rash of motor vehicle burglaries. The cars were all unlocked. The police chief said at the time: “The bane of our existence is unlocked vehicles. Try as we might, we can’t seem to get people to lock their cars.”
At Friends of Animals, the bane of our existence is that Connecticut residents don’t apply bear awareness guidelines at home to avoid habituation. We applaud residents who take down bird feeders March—November, use bear-resistant trash cans and wait to put trash out the morning of pick-up, and use electric fencing around beehives, chickens and goats.
However, people still don’t seem to understand that scents wafting from their home bait bears inside. Bears can detect and follow scent trails a mile or more back to the source.