550-pound unwanted tenant is the new face of Altadena’s bear invasion

“Are you the bear guy?” asked the neighbor who walked up Kenneth Johnson’s driveway.

Johnson said yes. A 550-pound black bear was still wedged in the crawl space under his Altadena home, as it had been since Sunday, giving him his 15 minutes of unwanted fame.

The homeowner, who lives across from the canyon where the devastating Eaton fire sparked in January, is no stranger to bears. Residents say Altadena’s bear problem has been escalating for years. Johnson shared video from a few years earlier of a large orange-colored bear crossing his driveway, and recalled looking out his window one day only to see a bear’s head resting there.

While speaking with The Times in his front yard on Wednesday, Johnson noticed a fresh pile of bear scat on the lawn next door. He was nervous to let more people onto the property because he’d been told he could be sued if the bear attacked anyone.

Bears have long been frightening residents and enjoying their trash while state wildlife experts seemingly struggle to find effective solutions, said Johnson and his neighbor Mel Peters.

Last week, Kenneth Johnson discovered that a large black bear had taken shelter in a crawl space under his home, and it has emerged only briefly since then.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

The homeowner, who described himself only as “rattled,” had prepared a trash can and sandbags to place in front of the entrance once the bear left. He’d done nothing but talk to the media and prepare since his Ring camera captured the bear moving in, he said.

Johnson had hoped that running noisy appliances — the dishwasher and the laundry spin cycle — would scare the bear away, but all the noise managed to do was frighten his cat. The last time the bear left was Sunday, he said, to rifle through his trash cans for 20 minutes before returning to the crawl space.

Bear 2120 peeks out from the home he has claimed in Altadena.

(Kenneth Johnson)

The bear, tagged by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as 2120, is male and around 550 pounds, a department spokesperson confirmed. It had been moved in the last year from Altadena and was relocated about 10 miles away from Johnson’s home but returned in the last five months, according to their records.

Peters said he had a close encounter with a bear trapped under his house, too. The bear had swiped at him, but he was able to chase it out using bear spray. It tore through a different opening to the crawl space and didn’t come back, Peters said. He suggested that Johnson use some well-known methods to get the bear to leave: mothballs, ammonia-soaked towels, bear spray. He warned that the fumes would come up through the house, though, possibly causing trouble for Johnson or his cat.

“The more I learn about them,” the scarier the situation gets, said Johnson, who previously worked as a model train product photographer. Bears can run up to 35 mph, even if they appear to lumber around slowly because of their size.

In the days after the video of the bear shimmying in and out of the tiny crawl space went viral, he said, incautious members of the media had been growled at or swiped at as they tried to get closer with cameras or approach the crawl space entrance. Fearing an attack that could leave him liable, he eventually taped off his property. Now the bear was just angry and might have retreated to the back corner of the space, he said.

Initially, it had seemed that Johnson was on his own with his unwelcome new live-in. When he first contacted the Department of Fish and Wildlife, he was told it was understaffed and that moving the bear was “unsustainable,” Johnson said. Although Johnson sympathized with the department’s lack of manpower, he said his hope was that wildlife officials could flush out his quarter-ton visitor and relocate it somewhere safer.

On Thursday, the department sent representatives to his home to investigate and see if something more could be done, a spokesperson confirmed.

Officials laid out bait — in cherry and caramel flavors — in Johnson’s backyard in the hopes that the bear would leave the crawl space sooner rather than later.

“There is hope that the bear will exit once activity in the area dies down tonight,” a department spokesperson told The Times on Thursday evening.

Kenneth Johnson stands next to a pile of sandbags and a trash bin in front of his home on Wednesday.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

The January firestorms drove bears out of their charred habitat and increased the number of home invasions. But Peters insisted the area’s issue with bears started getting bad eight to 10 years ago.

The 26-year resident said he was concerned that a refusal by wildlife officials to remove or relocate the bears could result in a serious incident.

“They’re getting too bold and too familiar,” he said. Like clockwork on trash day, bears come through and knock over cans, Peters said. He and his neighbors see a large bear at least once a week, if not more often.

Johnson said he hoped that the media focus would bring more attention to the neighborhood’s problems.

“None of us want to kill bears, but human lives matter too,” Peters said. He hopes the state wildlife department and local politicians will be more proactive, but “they don’t do anything until a disaster happens,” he said.