A 74-year-old Colorado man was injured after a black bear with three cubs crashed in through his sliding glass door and he was unable to get them to leave, the Colorado parks and wildlife department said.
Residents of the home were startled by a loud crash at about 8.30pm Thursday night and saw the bears coming in through the sliding door which had been left ajar.
The 74-year-old man tried to shoo the adult female bear out with a kitchen chair, but it knocked him into a wall and clawed at him, the wildlife agency said.
The bear charged and swiped at the man, injured the man’s head, neck, arms, shoulder, abdomen and calf before he and the other residents escaped to a bedroom and locked themselves in.
A sheriff’s deputy for Lake City, a south-western Colorado town of 400 people, chased the bears out, and medical responders treated the man at his house. His identity wasn’t released.
“It’s certainly lucky we didn’t have a fatality because it was close,” Lucas Martin, Colorado wildlife officer, said in the statement.
The man’s injuries were significant, but he didn’t need to go to a hospital, Colorado parks and wildlife said in a statement Saturday.
State wildlife managers found the four bears in trees near the man’s house and killed them, a standard practice to stop problem bears that associate people with food.
“It creates a very complex situation to mitigate,” Martin said. “Unfortunately cub bears that are taught these behaviors by their mother may result in generations of conflict between bears and people.”
Bears are common in and around Lake City and the wildlife agency had been made aware of other reports of bears breaking into unoccupied homes and garages in the area throughout the summer and early fall.
It was Colorado’s first reported bear attack this year. There were six in 2023.
As humans move in closer to the forest, more animals will appear in residents’ homes, said Tim Daly, with the California department of fish and wildlife.
Daly recommends not attacking a bear once a person is face-to-face with it.
“Turning and running is a bad idea. With a lot of wildlife things, that might trigger their response to chase,” he said.
Instead, he said people should slowly turn and back away from any wildlife they might confront. He also stressed that black bears are not dangerous, and it’s rare for a bear to attack someone.
“It might take a swat at you, but bears don’t seek us to attack us or to harm us,” Daly said.
Coral Murphy Marcos contributed to this report
