Bear Wanders Into California 7-Eleven Store

A 7-Eleven employee in California was shocked, and a little terrified, when a bear casually opened the door with its paw and walked into the store. 

Rachelle Ducusin was working at the convenience store in Olympic Valley, California, near Lake Tahoe, when the incident took place. In video captured by Ducusin, and made available by People on Wednesday, the bear lumbers into the convenience store seemingly unfazed by her screams for it to get out, even activating the hand sanitizer dispenser as it wanders through the doorway. 

"Oh my goodness. He knows how to open it," Ducusin says in the footage as the bear walks in. She then repeatedly shouts, "Hey, stop!" at the animal. 

The bear had reportedly been rummaging through the store's trash cans outside before entering the 7-Eleven. Ducusin claims she had attempted to scare it off but it charged her twice. She sought refuge inside, where she phoned 911. Emergency responders arrived and scared the bear off by shooting rubber bullets at it, but the four-legged creature later returned to search through the trash cans again. 

The bear had an ear tag on it, which means it had been captured and marked as part of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's efforts to trap and tag bears in the Tahoe Basin, according to SF Gate. 

"The behavior is not typical of wild bears," Kevin Thomas, a regional manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the outlet. "It is a learned behavior from pursuing human food sources rather than foraging in the wild. Lake Tahoe has a robust bear population and they often interact with homes and businesses in search of food. Once they get a taste of human food it can be difficult to reverse the behavior. Part of the trap/tag/haze effort we operate is to try and recondition those bears to pursue natural food sources."

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