Imagine you’re headed to the kitchen for a late-night snack, only to see a rotund mass covered in dark fur ripping into your leftover pizza in the fridge.
This was the exact sight that apparently terrorised residents of Lake Tahoe, California, over the past year.
The round female black bear — aptly nicknamed ‘Hank the Tank’ — was accused of over 40 break-ins and was even threatened with euthanasia.
The mother bear has since been transported to an animal sanctuary while her cubs have been relocated to a rehabilitation centre.
‘Hank the Tank’, also known as ’64F’, is a female black bear weighing 227kg.
Source: BEAR League on Facebook
According to the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, black bears typically weigh between 45kg and 136kg. This means Hank was rather overweight.
The chonky animal bear-ly had respect for human laws, allegedly breaking into at least 21 homes in the Lake Tahoe area for food.
In 2022, residents of the area filed at least 102 police complaints about Hank the Tank, including for scratching cars and destroying screen doors, according to The Straits Times.
Authorities reportedly used sirens and beanbag rounds to deter her spherical majesty, but they were to no avail.
Seemingly unafraid of humans, Hank bashed her way into locked properties. She even brought her three cubs along to the crime scenes of some of her most recent ‘heists’.
BBC reported that the large bear was, at one point, accused of invading over 40 homes. This prompted CDFW to consider euthanasia for the bear.
Thankfully, DNA evidence exonerated her of many of those.
The evidence confirmed the presence of other equally-hungry bears and that Hank was only responsible for ‘only’ 21 of these crimes.
Hank and her cubs spent more than a year on the run before CDFW authorities eventually apprehended them last Friday (4 Aug).
Source: CDFW
Even though Hank escaped the death penalty, folks from CDFW decided to transfer her to an animal sanctuary in Colorado.
Meanwhile, her cubs were brought to a separate facility in Petaluma, California to correct their “negative behaviour”. CDFW intends to release the cubs into the wild after their rehabilitation.
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Featured image adapted from BEAR League on Facebook and the CDFW website.
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