Imagine spending months wondering what that weird purring noise underneath your home is. Maybe it’s the plumbing, but then again, pipes don’t exactly purr, right. RIGHT? Maybe it’s the floorboards themselves? Again, not really a purring sound; that’s typically reserved for animals. But what kind of animal would purr so loudly that it would penetrate the floorboards of a home?
The answer, apparently, is a family of bears.
Near tip of South Lake Tahoe, an anonymous renter came to the conclusion in April 2022 that perhaps the weeks long noises they’d been hearing could be caused by a bear. As strange as it seems, bears do have a way of getting into strange areas, especially when it comes to hibernating. Last year, we reported about a woman being attacked by a bear who was camping out underneath an outhouse; a really un-bear-ably crappy situation.
In this situation though no one was hurt as the renter decided to call the BEAR League. And no, that is not the name of a children’s sports team from a mid ’90s family movie. In this case, BEAR stands for Bear-Education-Aversion-Response. Kind of a forced acronym really but not nearly as grizzly as it could be. Anyway, the team is concerned with making sure bears and humans exist safely. To achieve that in this sense the task at hand wasn’t that bad.
The BEAR League discovered a mama black bear already on her way out from underneath the house followed by her four yearling cubs. In order to keep them from returning to the location, a low voltage electric fence was placed around the building to prevent the bears from going back underneath. Apparently the family did try to return, but had to move to a new location; which sounds like a forcible eviction in some ways. Do bears have squatter’s rights? Legally divisive issue.
Anyway, the report from CNN indicates that the mama and cubs have been seen around the area so they’re doing fine as they continue to find a new place to hibernate. And now you know that the next time you hear extensive purring underneath your house, you might want to check for bears, or maybe have a professional do it instead… or your least favorite relative.
