A California family spent the winter dismissing odd noises that sounded a little like snoring, only to discover that five bears had spent the cold season hibernating under their house.
The Bear League group, which works to preserve bear habitat and help bears in distress largely around the Lake Tahoe basin region in the state, recounted the family’s astonishing episode last week.
In a Facebook post, the group described how one mother bear, along with three of her own cubs and an adopted orphan, had decided to spend the winter in the crawlspace under a local house.
“It was a home where people lived, and they thought they heard some odd rumbling, snoring-like noises but ignored it because it simply didn’t make sense … and the neighbors said they were imagining it because they didn’t hear anything,” the Bear League said in a Facebook post.
It added: “The bear family awoke and prepared to exit, and the people in the house could no longer deny there was probably a bear under the house.”
The unnamed residents called the Bear League, who helped usher the bear family into the woods, as well as making sure the human family in the house was also unharmed.
