'Shoo, bear:' Colorado woman's close encounter with a bear in her garage goes viral

The calm Colorado Springs mother captured the whole incident on video.

ByABC News
June 29, 2017, 7:59 AM

— -- A Colorado woman's surprise encounter with an uninvited guest in her garage has gone viral.

"Freaking bear, get out of my garage," Denielle Backstrom, of Colorado Springs, can be heard saying in a video she filmed of the encounter with a bear at her own home.

Backstrom had just pulled into her garage on Tuesday when the black bear, estimated to be around 400 pounds, followed her inside.

"Shoo bear, shoo!" Backstrom says, honking her car's horn to try and scare it away. "I can't go because there is a bear behind me, come on, go bear, move."

The bear climbed onto Backstrom's car and sniffed around her garage before it eventually ran away. Backstrom called local wildlife authorities to report the sighting.

Backstrom said she first heard the bear's breath and then saw it right next to her.

"I hear this loud breathings sound," she told local ABC affiliate KRDO-TV. "I kind of opened my door all the way like this, and the bear was right there."

Officials told KRDO that they think the bear could be the same one who recently ate a tub of ice cream that at another person's garage in the same area.

"This bear has clearly learned that people can provide food and that garages are a place that it can find food," Frank McGee, area wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told KRDO. "Unfortunately when that happens it can make the situation dangerous."

Wildlife officials set a trap behind Beckstrom's house to capture the bear, KRDO reports.