By Miles Jung-Kilbreath
Gateway News
STREETSBORO — Brenda Weingart expects raccoons to go through her trash, but when she woke up at 3 a.m. Tuesday to the sound of a creature rummaging through her garbage, she knew it was no raccoon.
“We saw a bear walking around our yard,” said the Diagonal Road resident.
“When I called police, I think they must have thought I was crazy since I was calling about a bear at 3 a.m. When they came to look for the bear, they found it sitting on my deck,” she said.
Streetsboro Police Sgt. Darin Powers said the bear has been seen around the city the past three nights. The department is advising residents to leave it alone.
The bear also was seen climbing a tree behind the S.R. 14 Taco Bell on Wednesday and near Maplewood Nursing Home on Thursday, Powers said.
Although Weingart said she found a claw mark on the outside of her house, she may have been lucky.
Jamie Graham of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division, said a S.R. 14 homeowner reported a bear around 4:30 a.m. Friday.
“The homeowners heard the noise and thought it was just from the thunderstorm, so they went back to sleep. They didn’t discover it was something else until the morning,” Graham said.
Steve Lenart identified himself as the S.R. 14 homeowner.
The bear “knocked out the basement window, and you can see muddy paw prints all over the glass,” Lenart said. “He clawed out a screen window that was over 6 feet high. There were claw marks all over the house.”
Graham said the bear removed the siding from a wall outside the kitchen, damaging the dishwasher from the outside. Graham said it was probably because he smelled food from the dishes.
Graham said the bear is probably a young male black bear that has been kicked out by his mother to find his own territory, which normally happens during the summer. She said black bears are normally shy around people, but can still be extremely dangerous.
“If people see it, they should stay a good distance away,” she said.
Residents should also keep pet food inside and bring in bird or animal feeders, Graham said.
While Powers said he assumes the sightings in Streetsboro were all of the same bear, he said he can’t guarantee it. Nor has it been determined whether this is the same bear that was seen in Kent on Sunday, he said.
“I’ve been here 12 years, and this is the first bear sighting in Streetsboro,” Powers said.
Weingart said she first heard about the bear Tuesday when her son and his friends saw it in the woods behind their home. She said the bear fled deeper into the woods when it saw them.
On Tuesday, Weingart said the bear was outside her home for a “good amount of time.” She said the bear also jumped on the edge of her above-ground pool and took a drink from it.
The bear left the area after it went over to her mother-in-law’s house next door and disturbed a hornets’ nest.
Graham said the wildlife division normally waits to see if a bear will leave an area on its own, giving it “three strikes” before trying to remove it. She said at first they try to scare it off with firecrackers or by shooting it with rubber bullets, which only bruise the animal. If the bear still stays in the area, they will trap it and try to relocate it to a forested area elsewhere in the state.
Powers said if people see the bear, they should call police at 330-626-4976. He said police are tracking its position.
The Gateway News is a sister publication of the Record-Courier.