It’s all fun and games until the bears start learning how to drive. A couple in Durango, Colorado recently got a rude wake-up call when a bear crashed a Subaru Forester into their mailbox early in the morning and abandoned the trashed car on their front lawn, the Durango Herald reports.
The unidentified Ursus apparently broke into their neighbor’s Subaru at some point overnight. In its quest for food, the bear did a real number on the interior, tearing out the steering column, destroying the radio, and defecating on the seats. Failing to find any grub, the bear decided to set off for the nearest grocery store.
All right, not quite. In reality, Durango Police say the bear somehow disengaged the parking brake and bumped the manual transmission out of gear, causing the Subaru to roll backwards out of the homeowner’s driveway, down the road, and straight onto Ron Cornelius’s lawn.
“Usually, I don’t get up at 5 o’clock unless there is a bear driving a car down the street,” Cornelius joked with the Herald.
The impact broke the Subaru’s rear window, allowing the bear to escape before Cornelius and his wife could get up to investigate. They initially thought a person might have been responsible for the fateful joyride, but the damage in the car obviously points to a bear. Plus, the droppings.
This isn’t the first notable bear-on-Subaru incident we’ve seen in Colorado this year, or even the second. A Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman told the Herald that a late frost in early June impacted the acorn and berry harvest that the animals normally survive on, driving them to seek out other food sources. Durango officials have already responded to over 200 bear complaints so far this year, compared to 56 for all of 2016.
In the meantime, if you live in Colorado—maybe consider locking your car for the rest of the summer.