A bear hosted a summer pool party in the backyard of a Burbank home.
Police responded on an extremely hot Friday afternoon to a bear sighting in the 1300 block of Paseo Redondo, in the neighborhood above the San Fernando Valley.
Officers found the bear submerged in the corner of a hot tub, with one arm resting casually at times on the edge, in the backyard of the hillside home.
A bear cub and its mom splash around in a Glendale pool. Credit: Paul Hubler
After a splash, the bear jumped over a wall and up a tree.
“Burbank Police are monitoring the situation with the assistance of the Burbank Animal Shelter and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife,” police tweeted with video of the bear.
The neighborhood is southeast of the Country Club Drive area, where residents have reported frequent bear sightings.
The residential area sits near the borders of the Angeles National Forest, one of many in the natural built-up landscape of southern California, and is flanked by the 210 and 5 freeways.
Black bears, which can have different colored furs, like to feed on plants, insects, nuts, berries, and anything else they deem edible, such as the contents of garbage cans.
If food is scarce in the wild, bears are likely to forage elsewhere, taking them to the foothill neighborhoods of southern California.
California’s black bear population has been increasing for the past two decades, rising from an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 in the early 1980s to between 25,000 and 30,000, and that’s a conservative estimate, according to the state department of fish and wildlife.
Black bears, recognized for their small, narrow heads and small ears, have coats that range in color from tan or brown to black.
Females grow to around 200lbs and males can weigh 350lbs with some giants weighing over 600lbs.
Approximately half of the state’s bear population can be found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and areas to the north and west. Only an estimated 10 percent of the black bear population inhabits west central and southwestern California.
A young woman battles a bear to save her pets in Bradbury.
Although it is on the state flag, the fearsome grizzly bear can no longer be found in the wild in California. The last observed grizzly bear in California was shot in the early 1920s.
This story first appeared on Telemundo 52’s sister station, NBCLA. Click here to read this story in English.
