California Man Is Threatening To Sue The State After Massive Bear Has Lived Under His House For Over A Month… & He Might Have A Case

This bear living in a California crawlspace is no longer a laughing matter.

What would you do if you knew that a 400-plus pound apex predator was loitering just a couple of feet below where you sleep? And has really made itself at home? An Altadena, California homeowner is currently facing that very problem. Ken Johnson has a massive black bear living underneath his house, and as of right now, it’s still there after moving in around Thanksgiving.

The “Golden State” resident originally wasn’t too worried about the bear in his neighborhood. The large wild animal has been frequently spotted in Altadena, as Johnson told NBC4 News. He only became concerned when he stopped seeing the big ol’ beast lumbering around his house. And the worrying really started up when the man noticed that the entrance to his home’s crawlspace was ripped up, creating a small opening for something to crawl inside if it so chose.

But Johnson wasn’t worried about a bear being in his crawlspace, because in his mind, the entrance wasn’t large enough for a bear to enter:

“When I saw it all torn up, I thought, ‘He must not be under there,’ because there is no way a bear could fit.”

In order to get to the bottom of it, Ken Johnson set up a camera outside the crawlspace to catch whatever was going in and out on film. Soon after, the California homeowner caught the culprit bear-handed. And the video of the bear crawling in and out of the comically small crawlspace hole is hilarious.

That being said, a close encounter that Johnson had with his new, downstairs neighbor has gotten less and less comical as time has gone on. The man has been treading lightly on his own property, and uses the trail camera to know when the coast is clear.

Johnson quickly contacted the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to ask for assistance in solving his bear problem shortly after it moved into his crawlspace. It’s somewhat of a tricky situation though.  A bear that large can be hard to immobilize with a tranquilizer, so there might not be a solution to the situation other than waiting for the wild animal to leave on it’s own.

The homeowner has previously said that law enforcement guided him (and his cat) to stay inside the house as much as possible. That’s what Johnson has been doing for over a month now, and he’s become increasingly frustrated. He told KTLA 5 that he feels as though the state should be doing more to help, and thinks it’s ridiculous that the state is saying there’s nothing they can do:

“I feel very defeated. Now what? It’s all up to me, and I’m supposed to watch my phone when he comes out in the middle of the night? Or sleep in the kitchen and listen for him every night?”

Johnson says that he can hear the large bear actively tearing things up underneath his home, and that wild animal even broke off a pipe that caused him to have to turn off his gas on Christmas Eve. All that to say that the California homeowner is starting to feel like he’s living in the bear’s house, and having to take cold showers might be the last straw for him:

“I can hear the plastic being shredded underneath, and one of the cameras picked it up just bulldozing through it. It’s a mess under there I’m just exhausted from the whole thing. I get my mind off it for a little bit, and then suddenly I get flooded back with, oh that’s right, I can’t take a hot shower. I’ve got to monitor the situation all the time,

This has gone on long enough, and it’s something that they should deal with. It’s a tagged bear. They’ve dealt with it before. They chose not to euthanize it, and now it’s back and it’s just going to keep on doing this.”

So is there anything that Ken Johnson can do?

Alison Triessl, a legal analyst who spoke to KTLA 5, said that the California man would just need to prove that the bear is causing damage and is a threat to his safety in order to bring a potentially effective lawsuit to the state of California. Based on what she’s seen, he’s already got a case:

“This homeowner certainly can prove that this bear is causing damage and is a threat to his safety. The Department of Fish and Wildlife actually has a 19-page policy when it comes to situations just like this, and over and over it says do all that you can to remedy the situation. But nowhere does it say that they should simply give up and have the homeowner deal with it on their own and wait it out.”

Though Johnson might not win any money from the lawsuit, a court order to remove the bear from his property (thus returning hot shower capability to the house) would likely be a prize worth a lot more than any amount of moolah.

The post California Man Is Threatening To Sue The State After Massive Bear Has Lived Under His House For Over A Month… & He Might Have A Case first appeared on Whiskey Riff.