Footage shows a harrowing “close call” as a large black bear rushes a New Jersey man and his dogs on his front porch before attempting to enter the home.
Hunterdon County, New Jersey is bear country. Yet no matter how BearWise we are, sometimes wildlife decides to go wild.
In footage sent to CBS NEW YORK by resident Joseph Damiani, the incident is captured in full. Damiani’s “terrified dogs” saw (or smelled) the black bear first.
From there, Damiani was rushed by what looks to be a young boar (male) who knows getting inside a human house means free, easy food.
“I hear a bunch of ‘woof, woof, woof,’” Damiani begins for CBS. “The dogs shoot right past me and then I see the bear… And then the dogs went in.”
The bear then “tried to charge into” his Annandale home, Damiani cites. His porch surveilance footage shows this clearly as the bruin slams into the door before rapidly pawing it.
To do so, the black bear slams right past Damiani. And his girlfriend, Shirley Perlinsky, was right on the other side of that door keeping the boar from entering:
WATCH THE SCARY VIDEO BELOW:
“When [the dogs] came inside the house, I just tried to lock the door, but I couldn’t because the door got caught in the leash,”Perlinsky recalls. “So I was fighting, I was fighting the bear.”
If not for Perlinsky, this couple may have had the black bear inside their home.
“The bear was pushing the door this way, I was pushing the door that way,” Perlinsky adds. “That’s my boyfriend, and I love him very much, but I couldn’t let the bear inside my house.”
As for that beloved boyfriend, Damiani says he wasn’t able to stick around to find out what happened.
“They say you’re supposed to back off and look the entire time. I didn’t do that. I just turned around and without even looking back, I went down the steps there, came in through that gate, that white fence and came around the front,” he remembers.
Sadly, all signs point to this being a habituated black bear.
Bruins living near human populated areas are very familiar with our trash, pet food, birdseed, gardens, and anything else edible.