The Bear Who Broke Into My Car

Apparently, he’s still learning.

Last week, a bear broke into my car.

It happens.

Living in bear country means learning a few rules, and one of the biggest is this: never leave anything that smells good in your car.

I mean anything.

Not food. Not leftovers. Not a granola bar.

Not even one stick of gum in the glove compartment.

We’ve learned the hard way over the years. You can’t have anything yummy smelling in there. Not even an M&M stuck in the crack of the seat.

Those little guys will smell it.

And then they will break in.

If you leave your doors unlocked, a bear can open them remarkably gently. If the bear hasn’t had to use aggression to get inside, sometimes there isn’t even a scratch on the car. They can be surprisingly polite about it.

What you are left with, however, is another story.

You may find your car full of bear slobber, bear snot, bear hair, pine needles, dirt—and a very humbling reminder of just how strong a black bear really is.

You and I open the center console by lifting the lid gently.

A bear basically rips the top off.

We might bend over and reach under a car seat to see if there’s something underneath.

A bear apparently thinks, Why bother reaching?

He just removes the bottom of the seat.

It’s like taking the top off a box or opening a chest. The bear simply pulls it up, bending the metal as easily as we might bend a twist tie.

So why did this bear break into my car?

That’s the interesting part.

There was nothing in it.

Nothing.

And he broke into my dad’s car, too.

There was nothing in his car either.

Then we looked at our camera footage.

The bear was a juvenile.

And suddenly I had a theory.

I think this young bear is learning how to be a bear.

Maybe this is his first season out on his own. He knows there are food opportunities around houses, but he’s still figuring out how to investigate them. He knows to look in garbage cans. He knows that cars sometimes contain interesting smells. He’s learning what to follow with his nose and when something is worth the effort.

That’s my theory, anyway.

Earlier, he had come onto the porch and knocked over an empty garbage can. We think he may have started near the barbecue, where my dad had spilled something that smelled interesting.

Big score for the bear!

Then he moved on toward the birdseed.

There wasn’t any birdseed there, but apparently the smell was still hanging around, and maybe that made him curious—or a little frustrated.

And then he moved on to the cars.

I have no idea where he went after that.

But he did leave me a little gift.

Inside my car was a bag that used to belong to somebody else. Apparently, the bear found it rather tasty.

I’m not sure whether he accidentally left it behind or whether he was intentionally leaving me a present.

I choose to believe it was a gift.

Maybe that’s what happens when you live alongside bears. You learn to accept the little surprises they leave behind.

You learn their habits.

You learn their strength.

You learn to be more careful about what you leave around.

And every once in a while, you get to watch a young bear learning how to navigate the world.

I’m just hoping that, as his education continues, he eventually learns that my car is not a classroom.