2 bears break through window while family inside home

Two black bears showed no fear when they broke into a Rossland home through a basement window and refused to leave the property.

Miche Warwick came home from a morning out with her three young children and found a bear cub rustling through the garbage in her basement. Her partner rushed home from his nearby workplace and, between the two of them, they scared the bear away.

Or so they thought.

"My partner went back to work because it seemed that everything was fine. And then, maybe 15 or 20 minutes later, I heard a noise," Warwick said.

The bear was back, this time with a sibling in tow, and sniffing around Warwick's back porch.

"It was on my back deck with its paws up against the door to my kitchen, looking through the window into my house," she said.

No matter how loudly she yelled or banged on the window, the bears wouldn't leave. Instead, the two cubs loped around the perimeter of the house back towards the basement entrance.

One of the cubs smashed through the basement window with his snout, Warwick said, and they both entered the house again.

"I had three kids upstairs on the main floor and two bears in the basement," Warwick said. "It was utterly terrifying."

Her children were equally petrified and screaming in fear, Warwick said.

"I had no power, nothing, no capability of scaring these animals away," Warwick said. "At some point in this whole situation, something switched in my head and I became the mother bear protecting her cubs."

She called emergency services for help.

Ben Beetlestone, one of the conservation officers who arrived at Warwick's house, said they had no choice but to put the bears down.

Usually securing food and garbage in a basement is enough to keep even the most habituated bear away, Beetlestone said, but these bears showed no fear.

"We can't have bears entering into houses, it's just too much of a risk to the public," he said.

To hear the full interview withMicheWarwick, click on the audio link below:

With files fromBob Keating.