A hungry black bear crawled into the garage of a Connecticut bakery, scared several employees, and ate 60 cupcakes before leaving.
Employees at the Taste by Spellbound store in Avon, Connecticut, were loading their orders into a van Wednesday when the bear appeared.
The trail of cupcakes left by the bear at Taste By Spellbound, a bakery in Avon, Connecticut, on May 24, 2023.NBC Connnecticut
There are between 1,000 and 1,200 black bears living in Connecticut, according to the state environmental agency, and last year they were sighted in 158 of the state's 169 localities.
The bakery's owner, Miriam Stephens, wrote in an Instagram post that she heard employee Maureen Williams screaming for help because there was a bear in the garage.
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Williams told WTNH that he tried to scare the bear, but the animal retreated and returned three times. He said he tried to attack her, so he got out of the garage and started running.
Surveillance footage shows bakery workers walking around the establishment to try to scare the bear, but started running after the animal scared them.
The video shows the bear pulling a bin of cakes from the garage into the parking lot. Stephens said he ate 60 cupcakes.
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One of the pastry chefs eventually managed to get the animal to leave after honking his car horn, according to Williams.
The thief, more than six feet tall, had already left by the time police and agents from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection arrived at the site.
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This year has seen a series of disturbing interactions between black bears and humans in Connecticut.
Last month, a 74-year-old woman suffered bites to her arms and legs when she was attacked by a bear while walking her dog in a Hartford suburb, the first such attack in 2023. There were two attacks last year, including one in October where a 10-year-old boy was bitten in a backyard.
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"The frequency and severity of bear-human interactions is increasing," Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman Paul Copleman said Friday.
Statistics compiled by the department show that in 2022 there were a record 67 reports of bears entering Connecticut homes. The previous record was 45 in 2020.
With information from AP and NBC Connecticut.