Black bear caught on camera opening garage door in Whittier

WHITTIER, Alaska (KTUU) – As any Whittier resident will tell you, black bears are a common sighting in the tiny town in Southcentral Alaska.

But the bear encounter Chanda Knutson had early Friday morning outside the Begich condominiums was different. The bear was a “bigger one.” And the hungry bear appeared ready to topple some trash cans. So after retreating to a safe distance, Knutson filmed the curious animal as it wandered up to a barn across the street.

What happened next surprised even Knutson, a seasoned bear observer.

“No, he didn’t!” she says on camera as the bear raises the garage door. “Oh no it didn’t!”

The video shows the bear looking at the garage door, then getting its paw on the underside of it and pushing it up to gain access inside.

The bear disappears inside the barn before the video ends.

“It’s not a huge processing to it, I was just kind of shocked it opened the door,” Knutson said, “but I literally have a bear encounter every couple of weeks.”

Brenda Tolman, the Whittier resident who owns the barn with the garage door where the bear was sniffing around, also owns a reindeer that is known around town and said she keeps animal feed inside the barn where the bear was.

Tolman said she stores grain and vegetable-based feed in the area it was sniffing around.

“It didn’t want any of that, so it left, but he hit all the garbage cans at night and knocks them over,” she said.

Tolman said the bear aggravates the reindeer but has not yet harmed it.

“It hasn’t tried to get in, and this is about the third or fourth year this same bear has been here,” Tolman said.

“All I thought was I’m glad he didn’t hurt the deer. The rest of it is, you know, collateral damage.”

Knutson said she didn’t fear for the reindeer’s life.

“It would not have been aggressive enough to get into the cage or anything like that,” Knutson said.

When asked what advice she would give for people to avoid bear encounters, Tolman asked Alaskans to not leave food out for wild animals and said she does not trust bear spray, which is a common backcountry deterrent that has become popular in recent years.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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