Condo owner finds bear in kichen

A Crystal Bay Cove resident returned home Sunday night to find that a bear had made itself at home in her condominium.

Lee Cunningham spent the evening out at Sand Harbor State Park, enjoying the Midsummer Nights performance with friends. She arrived home at 10:30 p.m. to find a bear entered her home through a screened-in window. Two refrigerators were open and food was all over the floor; the bear left her kitchen a mess.

Cunningham raises Burmese kittens and her first thought was that they had created the mess, but she thought better and wondered if someone had broken into her home.

She then found a business card from the Washoe County Sheriff's Office and called. Cunningham found out that her next-door neighbor heard the bear enter her house and called the sheriff to take care of the situation.

The responding officer hit the bear with a number of rubber bullets to scare it out of the home.

"It was very exciting," Cunningham said.

Neighbors and the officer suspected that the intruder would be back so they boarded the broken window and Cunningham has since added ironwork to the window.

She had two sets of kittens in the home, aged five and seven weeks.

"Thank God (the bear) didn't seem to want to eat the baby kittens," Cunningham said.

The bear made off with quite a bit of food along with Cunningham's favorite plastic cat food bin, which was full.