Bear breaks into nursing home trying out beds like Goldilocks
Goldilocks is a classic children's story about a little girl who makes herself at home in the house of a family of bears. She tries the food left out on the table before climbing into all three beds to see which felt best. Of course, this was a fairytale with a lesson to be gleaned in the end but it would seem that a black bear in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania thought he'd try to imitate art by breaking into a nursing home.
The bear, while large is still a cub, broke one of the windows at St. Andrew’s Village in Indiana County before snooping around the facility. He found residents' bedrooms and crawled into several different beds presumably to get comfortable or look for food. It wasn't until a staff member heard a loud bang that the bear was discovered. Charlene Elliott, a lead certified nursing assistant is the one that heard the loud noise and rushed to see if someone fell but much to her surprise, it was a bear.
Curious bear peeks around a tree trunk.Photo credit: Canva
"I was sitting there at our nursing station and I heard a big crash, so I thought it was one of the aides that fell and I got up and I seen that it was a bear coming down the hall towards me," Elliott tells WPXI. "Going through my mind was get the thing out of here."
While Elliott was startled by the bear's presence, she didn't panic scaring the bear or the residents. Instead she told the residents and aides to get all the doors in the building shut in an attempt to keep the bear from hiding out in a room. The baby black bear was loose in the facility for about fifteen minutes and though the nursing assistant attempted to get the rooms closed off in time, the bear still found his way into some of the residents' beds. Yes, the residents were still occupying the beds when the bear climbed in for a quick snuggle.
Elliott told the residents not to move or touch the bear for fear that he would maul them out of fear. That's certainly one way to get your heart rate up, wake up with a bear in your bed. Thankfully none of the residents the bear got cozy with were harmed in the bear's Goldilocks-style adventure. Surprisingly, the residents also remained calm with one of them offering for the nursing assistant to feed the bear her sandwich so he would hopefully leave the the facility.
Instead of feeding the bear a sandwich, they decided to use Rice Krispy treats to lure the bear out of the facility with the help of one of the resident's walkers. As the bear snacked on the cereal covered in melted marshmallows, the workers moved him along by pushing him on the rear with the walker until he was completely outside of the facility. The bear ran away but to make sure the cub didn't find it's way back to demand more treats, the facility contacted the game warden which came out and set up a trap outside of the building.
Bear family portrait in their natural habitat.Photo credit: Canva
You'd think they'd put things in there like berries, salmon and other things bears like to eat in order to trick him into going inside, but they didn't. The bear clearly enjoyed sweet treats so the game warden filled the bear trap with donuts and other pastries which must've smelled delightful because the bear was trapped quickly. They plan to take the bear far away from St. Andrew’s Village to a place with less processed food but plenty of room for a bear cub to become a bear without interacting with humans.
Thanks to the quick thinking of the workers and residents at St. Andrew’s Village, everyone remained unharmed, including their furry visitor.