KIMBERLEY, B.C. — A hungry grizzly bear with a taste for pet food came in through an open window of the wrong home in Kimberley, B.C., early Sunday morning.
Niki Traverse says frantic barking from the family’s small dog woke her at about 4:30 a.m., but she never expected to see a bear, oblivious to everything but a bag of pet food, chowing down near her kitchen door.
Traverse raced back to the bedroom, waking her husband, Mark, who was able to grab and load a rifle from the locker in their bedroom, then step into the kitchen to startle the grizzly, which immediately lunged.
Traverse says her husband fired three shots, the first from about three metres away and the second from barely two, but that bullet felled the advancing bear and the third ensured it was dead.
A conservation officer in the southeastern B.C. city told the family that it’s extremely rare for a grizzly to enter a home, but the 10- to 15-year-old male was sick, emaciated and would never have survived the winter.
Traverse says she didn’t sleep well Sunday night, but she’s comforted that her husband knew what to do and that the bear broke into the only house on the street that is home to an experienced hunter.