Colorado Springs – Vicki White- Cribbs had dozed off while watching TV in her basement and was startled back to consciousness Thursday shortly after midnight by the incessant barking of her puppy, Bubba.
The 80-pound Newfoundland and black Labrador mix ran around in circles, barked some more and did laps up and down the stairs.
White-Cribbs, 52, had never seen her act that way before.
She walked quietly up the steps, half expecting to encounter a burglar in the 6,000-square-foot ranch home.
Instead, she heard her husband’s steady voice.
“There is a bear in the house,” Jay Cribbs, 47, said from near the master bedroom. “Get downstairs and lock yourself in a room.”
Downstairs, White-Cribbs’ 9-year-old granddaughter, Amber Carr, slept. In another room, Amber’s mother, Mindy Lee, and her boyfriend were asleep.
The family’s cellphones – and the cordless – were in the kitchen, precisely where the 200-pound black bear was enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet.
For the next 40 minutes, the family hid in bathrooms and bedrooms as their uninvited guest made itself at home in their foothills house near the Broadmoor.
It eventually fled via the same open window it had entered, leaving the recent Florida transplants unharmed, but with an amazing story.
“I’d rather be in a hurricane than have a bear in the house,” Amber said.
Michael Seraphin, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, said the window was open and the bear smelled food.
This time of year, bears are switching from a diet of grasses and flowers to higher-calorie foods such as berries, acorns and dead critters.
“The nutritional value of the natural forage has gone down (due to hot weather), and the nutritional needs are starting to go up,” Seraphin said.
During its feeding frenzy, the bruin crushed a wooden bread caddy and devoured hot dog buns, a loaf of bread and tortillas. It pulled open the doors on the fridge and freezer and snacked on turkey, pot pies, chicken legs and vanilla ice cream. The bear left razorlike scratch marks in a newspaper wrapped around a frozen rainbow trout that Jay Cribbs caught at Elevenmile Reservoir.
From the basement, White- Cribbs could hear “actual bear-type, roaring animal noises. And at one point, when he got quiet, I was really worried for my husband.”
There was cause for concern.
The bear, at one point during its visit, made its way to the master bedroom, where Jay Cribbs was hiding.
“The bear was shaking his door,” White-Cribbs said. “There’s scratch marks in the door.”
Downstairs, White-Cribbs hid in a room, haunted by the thought of the bear coming her way. The door to Amber’s bedroom was wide open. If Amber heard Bubba barking, she would wake up and investigate the commotion.
White-Cribbs peeked out the door.
“It looked clear.”
She dashed across the basement, “a long 40 feet,” and found her granddaughter.
“Amber, you need to get up,” White-Cribbs said. “We need to get in the bathroom. There’s a bear in the house.”
“Uh-huh,” was a sleepy-eyed Amber’s skeptical response.
“Pap-pap, he’s by himself upstairs and we don’t have a phone,” White-Cribbs said.
She took Amber into the bathroom and locked the door. From there, White-Cribbs yelled out the window and woke up her daughter. She told Mindy, 28, to call 911.
Colorado Springs police arrived a short time later. Amber crawled through the bathroom window, and an officer carried her to a police cruiser.
The bear eventually made its retreat through the dining room window. Either on the way in or out, the bear knocked over and shattered a 5 1/2-foot-tall concrete Grecian sculpture.
Amber said she doesn’t like bears as much as she used to now.
“I have bears downstairs, but they are teddy bears,” she said. “And I’d like to see them in the zoo but not in my house.”
White-Cribbs said that she and Amber said a prayer of thanks after the commotion died down that no one was harmed.
They flipped on the TV around 3:30 a.m. and watched the kid-friendly cable channel Animal Planet.
“They had bears on,” White- Cribbs said. “Agghhhh.”
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
