Latest bear to visit Glendale is much smaller, police say
Glendale’s trash may have attracted a third bear to its hillsides, with residents in the Chevy Chase Canyon reporting a much smaller, 150-pound ursine in their neighborhood Thursday night, police said.
That would put the bear at half the size of the two 300-pound beasts spotted earlier this summer.
Residents reported seeing a black bear about 9:15 p.m. in the 3100 block of Linda Vista Road -- a few blocks from where a 300-pound bear was spotted in May digging through trash and snacking on chicken, rice and baklava. That bear reappeared two weeks ago, also on a Thursday -- the night before the trash is collected in the hillside community.
Glendale Police Sgt. Craig Tweedy said the California Department of Fish and Game had been notified, but unless the bear poses a danger, not much will be done.
“We will try to get it back in the hills,” Tweedy said.
Residents reporting the bear said this one did not have an orange tag on its ear, which would indicate that it’s unlikely to be the meatball-loving bear that made several visits to North Glendale earlier this year.
That bear eventually was tranquilized and relocated deep within Angeles National Forest. It has assumed a human-run Twitter handle and uses the pseudonym “Glen Bearian.”
Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz on Friday said the latest bear was much smaller -- about 150 pounds -- than the bears previously spotted around town.
Whether Glendale has the what the bears want -- from meatballs to sticky desserts -- or residents are just more adept at spotting the beasts, one thing’s for certain, they’ve got a nose for it.
“Bears’ sense of smell is 1,000 times more sensitive than a bloodhound,” said Andrew Hughan, a Fish and Game spokesman. “And when the weather is hot and the food starts to smell, they really come out.”
Despite being relocated deep within Angeles National Forest, it took just six weeks for Glen Bearian to find his way 45 miles back to Glendale.
In confirming that the bear had returned around June 21, Hughan said it’s possible that two bears were roaming the Glendale and La Crescenta area because it was unknown if he was the same bear spotted in Chevy Chase Canyon.
-- Jason Wells and Angel Jennings at the Los Angeles Times