Bear makes nightly visits to northern foothills home
Northern foothills couple capture video of animal outside home
Mike and Liz Grover hosted a party at their house Friday night to celebrate the 93rd annual burning of Zozobra.
Hours after their friends left, an uninvited guest showed up: a black bear weighing an estimated 300 pounds.
Since then, the bear has been visiting the Grovers’ house in Santa Fe’s northern foothills every night, the latest bear sighting in the area and a reminder that this is the time of year for bears to wander into neighborhoods in search of food.
“Last night, we actually felt threatened by the bear,” Liz Grover said Tuesday. “We heard some intense growling and knew that he was at the door.”
Liz Grover said she and her husband, who had little luck getting in touch with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish until Monday, ended up calling Santa Fe police. “They had our house surrounded,” she said. Police spokesman Greg Gurulé did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Liz Grover said the bear showed up the first time at 3:30 a.m. Now he’s arriving closer to 9:30 p.m.
Nothing seems to faze the bear, including the Grovers’ three big, barking dogs.
“This bear is not afraid of them,” Liz Grover said. “The dogs have chased him away, and he has come back within minutes. He is not afraid of the light. He is not afraid of me opening a door. He stood there and stared at me. He’s getting braver.”
Dan Williams, a spokesman for the Department of Game and Fish, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. But he told
The New Mexican last week that a report of a black bear near Tano Road and U.S. 84/285 north of Santa Fe was one of two dozen sightings of black bears around Santa Fe in August.
The previous month, the agency received 10 reports of bear sightings in the area. Williams called the month-to-month increase typical for this time of year.
“They’ll move back into the mountains as the food gets better for them,” he said, adding that black bears try to ingest 10,000 calories a day in late summer as they prepare for hibernation.
Liz Grover said she doesn’t want anything to happen to the bear except to be caught and taken back into the mountains.
The Grovers captured images of the bear on
their video surveillance system.
“I replayed the video [from Monday night] and saw that he was right at the front door and had been messing with the door and the window,” she said. “At the window, he was just smelling into the house. My son was right there under the window.”
After reviewing the footage more closely, Liz Grover said later Tuesday that she and her husband now suspect there are two bears, possibly a sow and her cub.
The Grovers are taking several precautions to discourage the bear from coming back, primarily by cutting off its feeding supply, such as taking their hummingbird and bird feeders down at dusk and putting their trash in a more secure location.
Williams said last week that the best advice is to leave the bears alone and remove their food sources.
“People have to learn to live with the wildlife and learn what not to do,” Williams said.
Liz Grover said she also planned to put fliers in neighbors’ mailboxes, not only to warn them about the bear but to help explain the police activity at her home Monday night.
“We were left feeling very comfortable and reassured that should anything happen, that we call the Santa Fe police and they will be out here,” she said.
“We have an 11-year-old son that, right now, is not allowed to go outside, not even in daylight,” she added. “We’re very nervous. We know that the bear is camped out in our backyard.”