Family discovers absolutely massive black bear hibernating underneath the floorboards

It wasn’t like Callie, a three-year-old pet pitbull from Connecticut, to bark and growl. But then, she had never been faced with an enormous black bear laying underneath the decking of her family’s home.

“I’m just looking around trying to find it, then I turn my head to the right and there is a bear just staring right at me. And he was absolutely massive,” said Vincent Dashukewich, who lives at the property.

In a remarkable scene now viewed by more than 11 million people online, Mr Dashukewich’s 28-year-old sister Tyler uses her phone to pan over the wooden slats and peek down at the crawl space below.

Sat there, stretched out on a bed of leaves, is the animal they now call Marty Bearnard.

“He was totally unfazed by everything,” said Mr Dashukewich. “As soon as we saw each other he didn’t move, he didn’t react. He’s definitely super comfortable.”

'We'll just leave him be'

The family contacted Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environment Protection, which offered two options - let the hibernating bear remain in its stupor on their property, or try and shoo it away using air horns and loud noises.

“My parents were advocating to try and get him removed, but I said: ‘Hey, he’s a hibernating bear. Why even mess with him right now? Just let him be as long as he’s not bothering anybody. We don’t even go in the backyard a lot because obviously the weather, it being winter and all so, we’ll just leave him be,’” Mr Dashukewich told the Milford Mirror.

Connecticut has around 1,000 black bears, and each year around 10-20 create their winter dens under people’s porches.

Over the last two decades, there has been a “rapid increase” in Connecticut’s black bear population, according to the department, which estimates that there are more than 1,000 of them in the state.

Jason Hawley, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Energy and Environment Protection told The New York Times: “We have never had a negative incident that occurred as a result of this.”

The agency, he added, encourages homeowners to let the bears stay there before they move on, usually around April.

Social media following

And so the bear has remained. It now has a popular Instagram account, with videos and photos posted to nearly 4,000 followers.

“Hey I’m Marty the bear, I live in Plainville under my family's deck. Currently I am hibernating until I'm ready for hot bear summer,” says the profile.

“It’s very divided. Some people say it's the coolest thing ever and other people say: 'Oh my God that’s so scary,'" said Mr Dashukewich.

“But I’m fascinated with bears. I think they are very cool animals and very misunderstood for the most part. Just to prove it, Marty hasn’t bothered us even in the slightest bit.”

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