An 82-year-old woman told game agents that she was awakened in the early morning by a crashing sound and her dog growling in her home in Boncarbo, west of Trinidad, according to the Colorado Parks & Wildlife department.
When she opened the double doors to her mudroom, a bear leaped at her. She described it as a “small, cinnamon-colored” bear, probably weighing less than 100 pounds.
The woman reported that she shoved the bear off her and immediately closed the mudroom doors. The bear “scrambled frantically around the room” before it climbed on a shelf and escaped by tearing through a window screen.
The woman refused medical treatment for her wounds. And based on her description of the bear, it is thought to be a cub or a yearling, according to CPW.
Second Attack Near Trinidad
It was the second recent black bear attack near Trinidad. Wildlife agents are still seeking a bear that walked in to a campground and bit a man late on Aug. 5.
That man reported that a “dark-colored bear” walked up to him in the dark and bit his arm while he was relaxing in a hammock.
The attack on the elderly woman was the fourth black bear attack reported in Colorado this year, according to CPW.
Colorado has a healthy population of black bears, but grizzly bears are thought to have disappeared from that state decades ago.
Bears Raise A Ruckus Everywhere
There has been trouble with black bears throughout the region this spring and summer.
At about 3 a.m. Thursday, a black bear broke into a couple’s home in Luther, Montana (near Red Lodge), and the man shot and killed it with a handgun.
A female black bear attacked a man last week as he opened his garage door in Victor, Idaho, near the Wyoming state line. Idaho Game and Fish agents later killed the bear and her cub.
There were several run-ins earlier this year with black bears in and near Sheridan. Wyoming Game and Fish department agents trapped and relocated some of the bears, but two were killed.
Most recently, a young male black bear was killed after it entered two houses and ended up on the front porch of a third home in Big Horn, near Sheridan.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
