Yogi Bear reclining with a sandwich beside signs reading “Jellystone Park - Visitor’s Recreation Area,” “Yogi Bear’s Retreat,” and “Yogi’s Den”; picnic basket reads “Picnic Basket.”

Bear tears through screen, breaks into Colorado Cherry Company building to eat blueberry pie

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The Colorado Cherry Company, a Colorado staple, offers pies so legendary that even bears want a taste. This week a young bear broke into the Colorado Cherry Company’s location on Highway 36 north of Lyons to chow down on a blueberry pie. Colorado Cherry Company Surprisingly, it’s not the first time this has happened. Back in 2015, a bear was able to get in and eat 28 pies, according to employees. The bear enjoyed many flavors but apparently did not touch strawberry rhubarb. The Cherry Company is owned by the family of CBS Colorado’s First Alert Meteorologist Alex Lehnert.

With Alex’s brother now running the shop, a new generation of bears seems to have taken an interest. Wednesday, employees at the Colorado Cherry Company near Lyons arrived to discover someone with a taste for blueberry pie had made an overnight visit to the shop. “An eaten pie on the ground with the paw prints, little blueberry paw prints on the glass,” said Bailey Sandahl, general manager of the Colorado Cherry Company location. The clues left behind pointed to one suspect. “We do have like some prints here from his nose,” said Sielh Avila, a Colorado Cherry Company employee, while indicating the window the bear entered through. Just after the shop closed, employees think the smell of fresh-baked pie wafting from some windows lured the bear in.

“Behind this window is where we have our ovens, and with them on, it gets pretty hot. So we like to open this during the day,” Avila said. “I guess the closers, they didn’t close it all the way.” It was a simple mistake, and one that made it easy as pie for the bear to break in. “I guess it was open just enough that the bear could smell it. And we do have a screen which used to be right here in front of the windows. And I guess he tore right through that. He opened the window and he climbed right in,” Avila said. “He went straight for the pies by the register, and he pulled a couple off the shelf, put them on the floor, helped himself to those.” The bear ate his fill, perused the store’s other offerings, then left, politely not breaking anything. “That’s him again on the other side, looking at the brochures, deciding where he’s going to go next,” Sandahl said, chuckling, while looking at security camera video showing the bear’s activities in the shop.

“Nothing was broken … except the pie.” “It says outside that Yogi Bear eats here, and it lives up to the hype,” a customer said Friday. “This seems like paradise for a bear.” Customers can’t blame the bear. “I think the bear made a good choice, picking the cherry pie because it is the best pie here,” another customer said. But the Cherry Company says he won’t be receiving an invite back anytime soon. “As cute as it was, we don’t want it happening again,” Sandahl said. “A fed bear is a dead bear so we’re doing everything we can to help fix that, so making sure triple checking all the doors are locked up at night, making sure the trash is sealed up and beared off.” It’s been a record-high year for bear sightings and conflicts in Colorado.

Officials have warned this year’s drought is pushing hungry bears closer to the Front Range, and to humans, in search of food.  The Cherry Company admits there’s more bear-proofing that can be done on the old building. They’re looking at reinforcing the doors and windows, and replacing doorknobs, because once a bear finds a food source, they will go back in. “I’m going to keep coming back where I’m fed. So obviously, you don’t want to encourage that. You want to keep the bear population away from the rest of us, for their sake and our sake,” Sandahl said. “It’s a give-and-take. We lost a pie or two, but I think we’ll live at the end of the day.”

Source: Bear tears through screen, breaks into Colorado Cherry Company building to eat blueberry pie – CBS Colorado

He who walks uprightly, And works righteousness, And speaks the truth in his heart; He who does not backbite with his tongue, Nor does evil to his neighbor, Nor does he take up a reproach against his friend.
Psalm 15:2-3

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