Humans apparently aren’t the only species that enjoy lounging on the deck and relaxing in the hot tub on a warm spring day.
A local woman looked out her window recently to find two black bears — a full-grown mother and a young cub — exploring her deck in Stowe Hollow. The mama bear even spent some time in the hot tub, which was empty of water.
“It was pretty funny. Scary, but funny,” said Judy Lazaro, who lives on Bryan Road with her husband, her 14-year-old son and a 17-year-old exchange student from Germany.
Lazaro said she was home alone around 11 a.m. on Friday, May 10, when she heard a ruckus outside.
“I was sitting in my office working and I heard either a rumbling or a crash, and I thought it was my two cats getting into mischief,” she said.
She went into the kitchen and looked through a window to the deck, where she noticed a side table had been knocked over. Not seeing anything else, she returned to the office. That’s when she glanced out the office window and saw the snout of a bear just outside the glass.
Moving back to the kitchen area, she spotted the mother and cub on the deck.
“The cub could not have been more than 14 inches long,” Lazaro said. “Even standing up straight he was tiny.”
The family had recently been cleaning their hot tub and had left it open, drained of water. The adult bear climbed inside and started trying to rip off the siding with its claws — much to the cub’s dismay.
“It started whining and crying as soon as mama was out of sight,” Lazaro said.
As she watched, Lazaro called her husband to tell him what was happening and snapped numerous pictures with her camera.
“(The mother bear) didn’t seem to be fazed by me,” she said. “I was inside so I had that sense of comfort, but I was literally maybe a foot and a half away from her while she was outside the door. And mama was pretty big.”
Eventually, the two bears walked down the deck steps and wandered into the front yard. When a neighbor came driving by on the street, the animals darted off into the woods.
Throughout the visit, Lazaro felt a mix of emotions, from fear to tenderness.
“I was excited, scared, in awe, and the little one was just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen,” she said. “It was a beautiful sight, I have to say, especially how attached the cub was to the mother.”
At first, she worried about her cats. One was lying on the couch, “totally oblivious to it all.” The other was outside but later came home unharmed.
Lazaro is not sure what might have attracted the bears to her property. She had a birdfeeder hanging outside, but there was no food in it. They may have been drawn by scents from the family’s barbecue grill, which they use frequently.
In any case, this was not the first time Lazaro has encountered a bear in Stowe Hollow. In fact, her family has had several run-ins with the big mammals since moving here 10 years ago.
“We moved to Vermont from Boston, so the first time I saw a bear it was quite exciting,” she said.
That first time occurred about six years ago. She was riding her bike down the street and a bear ran right across the road in front of her.
“Since then, we’ve probably had about five or six sightings, different incidents of seeing bears in the Stowe Hollow area,” she said.
Black bears are active this time of year, fresh out of hibernation and in search of food. The Stowe and Waterbury Conservation Commissions have urged commuters to be on the lookout for animals throughout the spring.
Lazaro did not contact authorities after her recent encounter (though she did call her neighbor, who has lived in Stowe Hollow for 25 years and never seen a bear, she said). But she will be a little more alert as she spends time outside this year.
“I do gardening, and the last thing I want is to turn around and know that I’ve startled a mama bear with her cub, so I do look around a little more when I’m in the backyard,” she said. “But, hey, they were here first.”
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