‘This is getting bad’ Swannanoa homeowner grapples with property-damaging bear

By Justin Berger

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    SWANNANOA, North Carolina (WLOS) — The views in Swannanoa’s Bee Tree community are breathtaking but in the heart of bear country, one homeowner is battling a nuisance bear that’s taking her breath away.

“This is getting bad because it’s starting to damage my property,” said Pamela Fountain.

Fountain has lived amongst the bears for nearly a quarter century.

“I’ve had many bears up here, but this is a trouble bear,” she said.

Over the past three or four months, a bear she said is either “a yearling or maybe two, two and a half years old,” has been causing her problems.

She estimated the bear weighs around 125 pounds.

“If you tried to trap it, I’ve got so many bears up here, you’d probably trap the wrong bear,” Fountain said. “I don’t know what the answer is.”

Fountain said it charged at her once. Another time, it was in the backseat of her truck, which she accidently left unlocked that day.

She said it tore into the foundation of her home.

“You could hear the claws on the metal,” said Fountain. “My pressure tank is under here, all my water pipes, and you could hear it and I thought, dear God it has got stuck under my house… and they’ve knocked that one totally under the house and cracked the whole block, the mortar, out of it.”

Further away from the main house there is an enclosed trailer that she said the bear has broken into six or seven times, including Sunday night.

The trailer only contains a scooter and car, no food.

“The first five or six times it literally pulled the door, you can see it, pulled it out and it was going in this way,” said Fountain. “The whole door is going to have to be replaced.”

Fountain is a life-long animal lover. That includes bears like ‘Short Fat Mama.’

“I’ve known it since it was an itty-bitty cub; I call it Short Fat Mama, the most gorgeous bear you’ve ever seen in your life,” she said. “Real short legs, short snout, she’s huge.”

Short Fat Mama is not the bear causing Fountain problems.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’ve done everything I know to do. I quit feeding my birds, there’s never no kind of food in my truck, no gum, no mints, no nothing.”

“There’s probably some level of habituation of food conditioning that’s happening, maybe not on Pam’s property, and maybe on a neighbor’s property or on the property of someone living in her area even,” said Ashley Hobbs, the special projects biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

Fountain said should she encounter the bear destroying her property or threatening her life, she’d consider taking lethal action. Hobbs said that is within a homeowner’s legal right if the bear is caught in the act.

“I love these bears but not when they start damaging my property, putting me in danger,” she said. “I can’t have that.”

Hobbs suggested deterrents like unwelcome mats.

“This is the bear’s home,” said Fountain. “Just don’t mess with my home.”

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