This is bad news. A woman in Maine has had her truck hijacked by a bear.
PARIS – A bear cub, estimated to be about 2 years old, has apparently found a new home in the back of a local woman's truck.
Cindy Thibodeau, owner of klips hair salon in Norway, said paw marks found all over the interior of her 2001 Sport Trac Explorer, early Friday morning have been identified by a game warden as bear tracks.
"He's done this before," said Thibodeau of the cub's increasingly brazen behavior that has resulted in the animal climbing into the open back of the Explorer and curling up and sleeping before climbing out early in the morning before being seen.
Thibodeau, who lives on Stoney Brook off Buckfield Road with two small dogs, two cats and her two little boys, said Friday morning that she realized she had a potentially serious problem on her hands once she discovered a bear was sleeping only 20 feet away from the door of her house. After notifying the town, Game Warden Tony Gray was sent to the house to take a look.
So far, the bear hasn't taken the truck for a joyride, but it is only a matter of time. Once he gets his paws on the keys, all hell is going to bust loose. But the advice from the Game Warden is a bit, er, odd.
"He advised her to do stuff to make the bear uncomfortable in the truck, like putting mothballs or a cup of ammonia in the bed," warden service spokesman Mark Latti said by phone early Friday evening in Brunswick.
"Also, if she does hear the bear tonight, to turn on her house lights and make a lot of noise and spray it with something. Usually, if you make a lot of noise, that will make a bear uncomfortable. The first step with any nuisance animal is to try and scare it away. That's the easiest and least expensive solution and, usually the most effective," Latti added.
That works sometimes, but it also backfires on occasion. Exactly what is the Maine Game Warden Service being paid to do? Other than give interviews to newspapers? One presumes a paid professional game warden would be better suited to dealing with a bear hijacking a vehicle than a woman living alone with two children.
Even Garrison Keillor advocates the simple solution–roll up the windows and lock your car. Though he says it’s to keep people from putting bags of tomatoes and zucchini into the car. He also said the sign that you have too much zucchini is–you start making zucchini daiquiris.