Bear pokes head through window as sightings increase in Hopatcong

HOPATCONG (WABC) -- There is another warning about bears in New Jersey after two spotting this week in Hopatcong, including one bear that poked its head in a resident's window.

The police department posted a picture on its Facebook page, urging neighbors to lock away their garbage as a precaution.

"It was over in our yard over here, and it took the garbage out, all over the front yard, all over," resident Alice McGroarty said. "And then we didn't know it was still out in the front yard after I cleaned it up."

It was Thursday afternoon when a young bear stuck his head through a screen on another homeowner's window. She walked into the kitchen, saw it and called police.

"When the homeowner got home, he found the bear coming through the window trying to get the garbage," Hopatcong police Sergeant Meghan Antonello said. "Our officers responded, they found the bear, rode over, and they dispatched one rubber buckshot, and the bear ran into the woods."

The problem, Antonello says, is that residents sometimes leave their garage doors open.

"The bear was actually in the garage," she said. "But the garage was filled with garbage."

Many people have special lockable storage bins for their garbage cans that the bears haven't figured out how to open.

Sussex County has one of the biggest bear population in the country, and most folks live with that quite nicely.

"We don't want them injured," McGroarty said. "Just go away. Go back to the woods where you belong, you know. Just leave the garbage alone."

Officials are not calling them nuisance bears because they have not been aggressive toward anyone, but the smell of garbage is like a dinner bell. So officials urge that garbage containment is priority number one in the area.