PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A Vancouver woman said she had to look three times at the video feed from her surveillance video before she actually believed there was a bear in her yard.
Kari Pelz lives on Northeast 141st Avenue, near Burton School.
Sunday, at around 3:30 a.m., she said the alarm indicating somebody – or something – is outside her home went off.
“It goes off every once in a while and I figured it was raccoons, probably. I looked on that camera in my bedroom to see the motion, what’s out there? And that’s when I see it’s a bear,” she recalled.
She and her husband were in disbelief until they saw it start walking up their driveway.
Pelz has lived in her home for 30 years and has never seen a bear before. She said they don’t live close to a wooded area and are in a neighborhood with a lot of houses.
“I was thinking that this poor bear has probably been pushed out of the wooded area that was close by that they’ve taken out now and are doing construction up there. They probably just don’t have no place to go,” she said.
The bear looked to be about 70 pounds, Pelz said. She said she called 911 and a police officer confirmed it was a bear, based on the video. By the time the officer responded to Pelz’s home, the bear was already gone.