'Co-ordinated bearglury': Bears break into Coquitlam family's car and garage, eat crumbs under car seat
When Sean McQuillan and his family woke up to a large mess in their front yard on Thursday morning, they wondered what was going on.
He looked at his phone and saw several messages from his neighbourhood WhatsApp group, and several missed calls from the police.
Eventually, the family would learn that around 3 a.m. that morning, two bears had broken into the car in their driveway and somehow managed to open the garage door.
“My son here was probably playing with the keys and left it unlocked by accident,” McQuillan said.
The family slept through the entire ordeal, even when RCMP vehicles pulled up at their house.
“I’m just shocked that we slept through it with a baby and a toddler and two dogs,” said Heather McQuillan. “It was quite a commotion out here.”
The father of two explained that the bears opened a number of the car doors appearing to look for food.
“They had lifted up the car seat in the middle and ripped it and shredded it to try and get at the little crumbs that he left underneath, that I had no idea were even there,” he said.
There are also a number of rips inside the car, on the driver’s and back seats. But what surprised him is that the bears managed to lift the garage door.
“This was a co=ordinated bearglury,” said McQuillan.
The weather stripping has been ripped off the bottom of the garage door, but the dozens of antique lamps that they rented out for movie productions, were spared. However, the garbage, that’s stored at the back of the garage, had been rifled through.
“They didn’t break anything but they did find the garbage,” he said.
Conservation officers told CTV News it’s likely that whatever attracted the bears to their neighbourhood, probably wasn’t coming from the family’s house since they hadn’t left any food out.
However, they are reminding everyone to secure garbage so bears can’t get into it and to make sure nothing else is left lying around outside that might attract them.
The parents told CTV News they will have to replace their two and a half year old son’s car seat.
This is the second bear interaction the family has had in 10 days. Just over a week ago, Heather told CTV News she came face to face with a mother and her cub.
“We were leaving, I had the kids in tow, car seat in my arm, and I open my door and I came within 2 or 3 feet there is a mom bear and her cub right there,” she said.
“I just closed the door, locked it and took a moment.”
From living in Coquitlam, the family knows that bear sightings are common.
“We respect the fact that we’re kind of in the bears’ … home and we definitely don’t want bears to be terminated or anything like that,” Heather said.
As for the two bears in this case, they were gone by the time police arrived.
“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the bears obviously we’re in their neighbourhood as much as anything else,” said McQuillan, “I hope they find some other food so they don’t keep coming back.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
BREAKING Former Air Canada employees among suspects identified in gold heist at Pearson Airport: police
Nine people have been arrested in connection with the gold heist at Pearson International Airport last year, Peel Regional Police said Wednesday.
MPs summon ArriveCan contractor to the House to be admonished in rare parliamentary display
Enacting an extraordinarily rarely used parliamentary power, MPs have summoned an ArriveCan contractor to appear before the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon to be admonished publicly for failing to answer their questions.
'Enormous sum of money': Actor Hugh Grant settles privacy lawsuit against tabloid
British actor Hugh Grant has settled a lawsuit against the publisher of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspaper, The Sun, over claims journalists used private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house, he said on Wednesday.
Gas prices across Ontario expected to climb to levels not seen since 2022, analyst says
Ontario is going to see a big jump at the pumps later this week as gas prices in the province hit levels not seen in nearly two years, according to one industry analyst.
U.K. plan to phase out smoking for good passes first hurdle
The British government's plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party.
O.J. Simpson was chilling with a beer on a couch before Easter, lawyer says. 2 weeks later he was dead
O.J. Simpson's last robust discussion with his longtime lawyer was just before Easter, at the country club home Simpson leased southwest of the Las Vegas Strip. About a week later, on April 5, a doctor said Simpson was 'transitioning.'
Some of the winners and losers in the 2024 federal budget
With a variety of fiscal and policy measures announced in the federal budget, winners include small businesses and fintech companies while losers include the tobacco industry and Canadian pension funds.
Father of boy accused of stabbing 2 Australian clerics saw no signs of extremism, Muslim leader says
The father of a boy accused of stabbing two Christian clerics in Australia saw no signs of his son’s extremism, a Muslim community leader said on Wednesday as police began arresting suspected rioters who besieged a Sydney church demanding revenge.
A wobble reveals the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy
Astronomers have spotted the most massive known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy after detecting an unusual wobble in space.