A man from Tennessee noticed that he has a gas leak on his property, so he called for repairs. However, when the repairmen showed up, they called animal rescue.
The repairmen discovered a bear was using the basement crawl as a makeshift den, so the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) was called immediately to the scene.
Sergeant Sexton from TWRA was concerned if the gas injured the bear, and there was no way to safely repair the gas line with the bear there. So he put together a plan with his team to carefully remove the bear under the house.
Once the bear removed the premises, they realized that the big bear was female and that she left her three cubs. The team picked up a carrier, a cub cave, blankets, towels, and warming disks.
“Sargent Sexton watched to see if the mother bear would attempt to return, but she did not. Officer will continue to check to see if there is any evidence of her returning to her former den,” a local report said.
In the meantime, the officers decided to rush the three little bears to The University Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine.
“The cubs are female, very young (their eyes are not open yet), and they weigh just over two pounds each. They are in good overall health. Late last night, Coy and Matthew were able to get all three to consume one nutritious Fox Valley Nutrition Bear Milk Replaces,” the Appalachian Bear Rescue reported.
It is early in the cub season and it appears mother bears are still on dens. So the organization alerted all wildlife agencies about the situation.
“We wrote in reference to the three little cubs: ‘Reunion with their mother is next to impossible.’ We’re happy we didn’t say it was flat-out impossible, though everything pointed it to being so. With all the humans going in and out of the crawl space, we were sure she’d never come back. But she did. And we’re happy she did. Learning never ends,” they said.
The mother bear returned to the site. And instead of trying to place the cubs to foster bear families, they asked the homeowners if they could let mama bear and her cubs wait out winter together in their makeshift den, and they agreed.
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