MONROE COUNTY, Pa. — A "beary" scary encounter in the Poconos this week. A woman came face to face with a bear in her kitchen.
But the big guy didn't seem to want to cause harm. He just wanted to eat.
We first showed you the video of the bear in Nicole Esemplare's kitchen on Wildlife Wednesday.
The video was so good, we knew we had to find Nicole and hear more about what happened. This is something she and her kids will remember for a long time.
On Monday morning Nicole was upstairs in her Pocono Lake home when she heard some loud noises. She went downstairs and noticed her sliding glass door was wide open.
“Who is in my house right now?” Nicole recalled. “Nobody is answering me and i hear somebody in there. I walk down there, and I turn the corner and this massive bear is literally eating a box of graham crackers on my floor.”
Nicole came face to face with a large black bear. He was going through her kitchen cabinets looking for food.
“He's pulling down Chips Ahoy, muffins, fruit snacks, applesauce packets. He ate so much food!”
Nicole says the bear also went into her kids' bedrooms. She thinks he was looking for more food. The family took pictures of the bear because they didn't think anyone would believe them.
“I just wasn't that scared after he was sitting there eating. He just didn't seem aggressive. He wasn't charging us. He was just eating.”
So how did the bear finally leave?
“A friend of mine came and put a ladder up, went through a bedroom window and wound up poking him with a stick and just scared him out. And I guess that's why he wasn't done eating. He took the tostado shells with him!”
Yes, that's right. The bear took a snack for the road.
Nicole says other neighbors have seen this bear in their cameras and bears are a regular occurrence in her development.