BUTLER, Pa. — A giant bear was spotted wandering around a yard by a Butler County man’s doorbell camera.
“Holy crud, is that big,” said Kevin Cumbridge.
That was his first reaction when he first saw the video of a massive black bear right by his front porch at 2:10 a.m. Friday.
“That thing is huge,” Cumblidge said. “I’m thinking, ‘boy I’m sure glad I wasn’t out there to discover it on my own,’ and the fact that it’s so quiet? This all happened around 2:11 in the morning, and [I] never heard a thing.”
He believes the bear came through the neighborhood, likely through an open area in his yard. He has a camera on the back of his house, but the bear never went that way.
He was surprised to see the bear since this is a residential area, and less than a minute’s drive from several shopping centers and the highway.
“We see raccoons, or deer, or maybe a turkey, but that’s about it,” Cumblidge said. “There’s enough population that I wouldn’t expect to see a bear here.”
He wanted to share his story with Channel 11’s Andrew Havranek to alert people in the area that the bear is roaming the neighborhood.
“My neighbors hang out on the porch a lot, and then all of the sudden, there’s a bear in your face,” he said.
People in this area of Butler may have more reason to be afraid of bears.
Two years ago this month, Channel 11 told you when Lee Ann Galante and her dog were attacked by a bear in her yard on Bellefield Drive — less than a 10-minute drive from Cumblidge’s house. They both survived, and the bear was captured and euthanized.
Back at Cumblidge’s house, he’s got a sign on his front porch that says “strays welcome.” But that’s not the case for this bear.
He took down his bird feeder in hopes it wouldn’t return.
“I hope not, but that’s not, I mean, no telling what a bear is going to do,” Cumblidge said. “If it wants to go somewhere, it pretty much does what it wants.”
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