A box of bear cubs mysteriously shows up in a North Carolina man’s yard, police say
What a man thought was a box of puppies that mysteriously turned up in his yard was something way different.
The man had left his Camden County home for a short while one evening in late January and when he returned, he came across an obscure box sitting on the walkway up to his house, Camden County Sheriff Kevin Jones told McClatchy News on Thursday.
He thought the two critters he discovered inside were puppies, so he called the sheriff’s office to report it.
But when deputies got to the home, they discovered they weren’t puppies at all, Jones said. They were bear cubs.
Now faced with a much more unusual situation than originally thought, the sheriff’s office called the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which came and got the bears, Jones told McClatchy News.
The sheriff’s office was told the bear cubs would be taken to the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, Jones said. But the mystery continued when the zoo staff later told the sheriff’s office they didn’t have the cubs.
The wildlife commission told the sheriff’s office the cubs were taken to an “undisclosed location,” Jones told McClatchy News.
The agency ended up taking the cubs to a black bear rehabilitator, agency spokesperson Jodie Owen told McClatchy News in an email.
The cubs are very young and vulnerable, Owen said, and it’s not guaranteed that they will survive. Jones said the cubs were so young their eyes were still closed.
“As with all cubs that are entered in the black bear rehabilitation program, all effort is underway to rehabilitate and return these cubs to the wild at the appropriate time,” Owen said in the email.
Despite Camden County’s large bear population, Jones told McClatchy News he’s never seen anything quite like this situation.
Camden County is in northeastern North Carolina, near the state’s Outer Banks. The coast is one of the areas that black bears inhabit in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.
Black bears love uninhabited swampland, which is plentiful in Camden County.
“But I’ve never in my time heard of somebody picking up bear cubs and leaving them on somebody’s door step,” Jones told McClatchy News.
The mystery about how and why the cubs got in the man’s yard remains unsolved, Jones said.
The sheriff’s office and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission are still investigating.
