It’s a beary tricky business — but somebody’s gotta do it.
If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of having an unwanted giant bear squatting underneath your home and wondering who to call — The Bear League could well be the answer.
The league, which just this week chased a 550-pound black bear out from under a Los Angeles house in just 20 minutes, is 30-year-old organization made up of 220 bear-scaring volunteers and over 2,500 members.
The crew boast bear removal stats of up to eight beasts per day and are headquartered in California’s scenic Lake Tahoe — where bear intrusions are all too common.
On Tuesday, the league swooped in — armed with their signature paintball guns — to save Altadena homeowner Ken Johnson from his 37-day nightmare of having a giant bear living under his home all through the holidays.
“We do that all the time,” Ann Bryant, league founder and executive director told The Post. “One of us crawls under the house, sometimes we shoot at the bear, sometimes we shoot the paintball behind the bear, sometimes it hits him in the rump.”
Dramatic footage on The Bear League’s Facebook page shows the shooters in action, as two paintball-gun toting volunteers venture underneath a condo complex to root out an unwanted bear. They take aim and fire several shots of the vegetable-oil filled pellets in rapid succession to spook the bear out.
Then continue blasting it in the behind as it makes a dash for an open exit — yelling, “go, go, go!”
Other high-octane tactics caught on film include deploying shock mats, which give bears a zap to keep them away from crawlspace entries once extracted. More traditional tactics, like loud airhorns and clapping are also used by the team.
“I still get excited every time I see a bear,” says league spokesperson Dave Fleishman, who helped battle the Altadena bear — nicknamed “Un-Bear-a-Bill” — on Tuesday. “He’s in the top three of largest black bears I’ve ever seen.”
Fleishman says he’s seen hundreds of bears in the almost three years he’s been with the league.
The nonprofit was formed 30 years ago after a trapper killed a bear named “Natalie” who was terrifying Lake Tahoe tourists. Residents were outraged, so they worked together on a better way to live peacefully with the local bear population, Fleishman explained.
To become a member you have to have a sincere interest in protecting bears he said.
“Lethal is the last resort. You don’t kill a bear because of property damage.”
The tactics are different from those used by the the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the two rarely work together, Fleishman said.
“We appreciate the opportunity to work in conjunction with them, but that doesn’t always happen.”
The CDFW tried to capture the bear under Johnson’s home for a month, using cherry and caramel scent spray along with a massive metal trap filled with sardines and peanut butter. Ultimately, the contraption captured the wrong bear.
Other videos on Facebook show mama bears nesting under homes with their cubs, some as young as five days old.
“If we believe it’s a mother we will not move them. It’s a death sentence for newborn cubs,” added Fleishman, who says the videos are used to study bear behavior.
And as for that giant bear scared out of Johnson’s home on Tuesday?
“For the moment, his bear-abouts are unknown,” he said.
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