A Monrovia couple’s home camera captured a 350-pound bear coming out of their crawl space. Gordon Tokumatsu reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024.
For Mark Lanza and Mark Chou, running into wildlife is a common occurrence as they live in Monrovia.
”We know there are bears, coyotes, and deer in the hills. We see it all the time," Lanza said Friday.
While the howling sound of coyotes is nothing new to the couple, they started hearing things that were too close for comfort.
“We started hearing noises under our house,” Lanza described, initially thinking it was a raccoon that was possibly hanging out in the crawl space.
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Their crawl space was open as they had to detach the screen due to plumbing and construction work.
“While watching the horror movie ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,’ we heard noises,” Lanza recalled. “We thought it was part of the movie’s surround sound, so Mark (Chou) paused it and rewound it, and we realized the noise was coming from beneath our house.”
One of the couple’s cats was alarmed enough to put her face in his.
“There’s something under the house!” Chou recalled telling his husband.
At the end of the night, the couple decided to place a camera outside by the crawl space.
The next day, they were startled to find out that it wasn’t a racoon.
“It was a 350-pound bear!” Lanza said.
The footage shows the gigantic bear squeezing in and out of the crawl space
Although the couple, who owns a pet shop in Laverne, loves animals, something had to be done about the surprising visitor.
“The next morning, we went to Home Depot and purchased sheet metal to board up the crawl space,” Lanza said.
The bear has not returned since they boarded up the coral space.
