WILDLIFE : Pool Among Bear Essentials for Home : Volunteers are building a 3,000-square-foot pen for spa-hopping celebrity black bear Samson at the Orange County Zoo. Other amenities of his new digs are a waterfall and scratching post.

Five volunteers braved the scorching heat Saturday, clearing brush, digging holes and removing fencing on behalf of a 500-pound, pool-dipping bear.

Volunteer workers from Southern California Edison gathered at the Orange County Zoo in Irvine Regional Park to help zoo officials build a 3,000-square-foot pen for Samson, the spa-hopping black bear captured in Monrovia in November.

Zoo curator Forrest De Spain said he expects Samson’s new digs to be finished by mid-June. Volunteers will be working every Saturday to help prepare for the arrival of the 15-year-old California black bear.

Samson became a local celebrity last summer after he was spotted lumbering about a rustic Monrovia neighborhood, stealing avocados, soaking in hot tubs, even stopping by regularly at one family’s back patio to watch television through the glass door.

He was captured and was scheduled to be put to death until the neighborhood where he had made himself welcome all summer mobilized to save him and he won a stay of execution from Gov. Pete Wilson. Samson has been staying at a Rancho Cordova Fish and Game facility in Northern California since his capture.

In his new digs, the bear will have his own scratching tree, a waterfall and of course, a pool.

The cost of the facility is estimated at $100,000, De Spain said. Several companies have donated labor, fencing and supplies.

Jim Sypitkowski, an owner and vice president of A-1 Fencing in Anaheim, had his employees erect a new fence to surround Samson’s future digs. Sypitkowski said he and his wife are animal lovers and were touched by Samson’s plight.

De Spain said zoo visitors are already asking about Samson’s arrival. The small zoo exhibits mostly native California wildlife.

“The cooperation and the amount of interest in our black bear exhibit is overwhelming,” he said.