CBS 12 News – by Scott T. Smith
LAKE MARY, Fla. (WKMG/CBS) — A bear crashes a Lake Mary family’s Christmas and it was all caught on camera.
It’s just the latest bear in a series of close encounters the past few weeks in Central Florida.
The bear was caught breaking into the back patio of a home on Redwood Grove Terrace in search for a late-night snack.
At first, Tramaine Gaines thought it was burglar breaking in his house, but then he saw the bear pressed up against his sliding patio door.
Gaines told Local 6 the bear came through his screen and headed straight for a pot filled with turkey oil.
“He bust through and came to this can where he thought a turkey was,” said Gaines. “He stood up on his hind legs when he stood up on his legs he was as tall as me.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said bears can smell food from a mile away and will eat almost anything as they pack on extra calories before winter.
Gaines said it’ll take a couple hundred dollars to fix the damage, but that’s a cheap price to pay for a lesson learned.
“The bear was just being a bear at the end of the day. If you have food out they’re gonna find it,” said Gaines. “We have to coexist even if it gets a little rough sometimes.”
FWC said its important to lock up not only your food, but your pet’s food too. Make sure to take out your trash the morning of pickup instead of the night before.
http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_12147.shtml
I live here and this is not unusual, the breaking in was but we see these bears on and off. Two were on our street just a few years ago they were young. They are not very large but might scare people that do not know they are not grizzly bears. They are the Florida Brown Bears and are seen quite frequently around towns. Why the food shortage I do not know but something is amiss.
Lake Mary is a quaint little town, for the longest time we were overlooked in the construction boom. I was the only building permit for the year of 1977 in August for new construction. I purchased a lot for 1K and had one of those companies that build on your own lot, make me a nice house. Only a few roads were paved and the main road in was two lanes. We had one elementary school built in 1924 and frequently upgraded, three churches, one gas station, two beauty salons, three banks, a very small police station and a volunteer fire station.
We had Santa come on a Saturday before Christmas and visit all the homes and give gifts and candy to the children. There were tree lighting ceremonies with manufactured snow the kids just loved. Once a year in March usually was Old Lake Mary days with food, crafts and story tellers but the best times were the firehouse barbecue; everybody came and the firemen were great cooks.
We have grown since then and its not so quaint anymore. We have all the fast food places, Target and K-Mart, three strip malls, one less church and so many beauty shops I can not count them all. Most of the roads are paved now and Lake Mary Blvd. is four lanes wide with two over the road covered walkways at the cost of a few mill and traffic has become frustrating. We now have a city hall that cost 5 million and our community center morphed into a beautiful pillared mansion that rents out various size rooms at an exhorbitant price to use them. The banks consolidated and we went down from 9 to about 6.
We are still small in area but like Disney they learned how to pack it in.
Susan In Lake Mary