A black bear has been dubbed the “worst houseguest EVER” after managing to break into one family’s home, with new photos showing the destructive aftermath.
On Sunday, Facebook user Melissa Anne Kelley-Champney posted images showing the destruction of the animal’s visit to her house. The “enormous” bear was inside the New Hampshire home for around 45 minutes on Sunday afternoon, during which time it managed to rip up a few walls and mangle a doorknob.
“Naughty, NAUGHTY bear!!” Kelley-Champney wrote. “We do NOT eat the walls and the doorknobs! Worst houseguest EVER!”
“Every SINGLE time he came at the house door I just kicked it and said LOUD ‘NO! BAD BEAR WRONG DOOR’ and he went back to trying to eat and claw his way out from a different side,” she added in a later post. “[The bear] was pretty good at staying away from the front door.”
Eventually, her husband was able to resolve the situation, climbing onto the roof and making his way to open the porch door, finally letting the bear out. Kelley-Champney said that she was “grateful he was brave enough.”
Kelley-Champney went into greater depth about the incident during a later interview with McClatchy News. In it, she said that she was more concerned for the bear during the whole ordeal, despite it causing “extensive damage.”
“I was never all that afraid for anything but his safety—black bears are very timid and he only wanted out,” she told the outlet.
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
The family suspected that the bear was able to get in after they left a porch door open. In the eight years they have lived in the house, numerous smaller animals have gotten in the same way, including birds and baby skunks since they “live in a very rural area and wildlife happens,” Kelley-Champney said.
New Hampshire Fish and Game noted that black bears are the only species of bear found in the state and advise residents to keep a safe distance from them in the event of an encounter.
Even in the event of an encounter, things are extremely unlikely to turn fatal. The National Parks Service reported that there is only one black bear attack per year in the U.S., on average, with 1 in 2,100,000 odds of someone being injured by one. Since 1900, the service said that there have been only 67 recorded fatalities from black bears.
Grizzly bears are known to be the most aggressive species found in the U.S., due to their inability to flee up into trees, forcing them to take action.