Mother bear and cubs take up residence under Oakland, New Jersey home

OAKLAND, NJ — A New Jersey family says they share their home with a mother bear and her four cubs who live directly under their house.

On Tuesday, the entire bear family finally appeared after months in the burrow. One little cub even needed a quick rescue after getting stuck.

“They were living here because the previous owners, when they built this addition, basically dug under half of it,” resident Veronica O’Brien Lim said.

O’Brien Lim talks about uninvited tenants living rent-free under her house. At first they were great, but lately… not so much.

These days at night they would go through the neighbors’ trash and put it back and chew the wires to the central air unit.

So she named it NJDEP Fish & wildlife.

“It appears that any intervention is really a last course of action,” she said. “If they drive the mother away, she will probably run away and abandon the cubs, and then they will have to find another pig to put with her. Or if they tranquilize her and capture the cubs, they will have to create a new den for them nearby.”

But she says she was told the bears would likely move in a day or two. That was two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood has become somewhat of a spectacle, causing traffic jams up and down the otherwise quiet Oakland block.

“The first week after I posted that they were there before they really started showing up, it was like the paparazzi are here, cars are passing by, people are walking, where are the bears? It’s not a zoo,” neighbor Donna Vanray said.

Then on Tuesday morning, for the first time since fall, the bears left the den.

A neighbor heard one of the cubs screaming in his backyard.

“Then I went down and looked at a little cub trying to get over the fence but he couldn’t,” neighbor Ray Miller said.

A Fish and Wildlife team freed the cub and reunited it with its mother. They believe they are out in search of food because of the warm weather, but they may return later Tuesday or in the fall to hibernate.

So the Lims are advised to prepare the space under their house.

NJDEP fish “Based on the site visit, the bear is moving its cubs,” says & Wildlife. NJDEP Fish Wildlife reminds the public of the importance of securing trash and other potential food sources that could attract bears to property.