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‘The odour lingered for hours’: Alaskan boy recalls moment black bear crashed into his room in the middle of the night

No one was hurt, but the animal left claw marks in the room, as well as black hair and a few smudges of blood

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Encounters with black bears in urban Anchorage have been more common in recent years. The Landis family said one had recently rummaged through their garbage. AP
Associated Press

A huge crash jolted 11-year-old Zach Landis awake in his Anchorage home, but it soon became clear it wasn’t a human intruder or his sisters playing a trick on him.

A black bear had broken through the garden-level window of Zach’s tiny bedroom and was whimpering like a scared dog in the room.

Zach screamed, and the man-sized animal bolted out the window and disappeared, the boy said on Friday about the Monday night encounter at his home on a large, thickly wooded lot.

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The boy scrambled over the shattered glass and ran upstairs to tell his parents.

We don’t live in a state of fear or being paranoid or anything... But we’re also much more cautious and more alert
Alisa Landis

“Mom, Dad, there’s a bear in my room,” he blurted. His mother, Alisa Landis, told him he just had a bad dream and that he could sleep with her and his father. No, no, no, it was a bear, Zach insisted, adding the animal had climbed out the window. At that point, his mother said, it must be an intruder.

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