ASPEN, COLO.: This just in: Do not leave the door ajar when you leave a TV station situated in bear country. Someone at a community-access station in the high country of Colorado did just that, and a bear took advantage of the opportunity, according to the Aspen Daily News. The staff at GrassRoots TV, a nonprofit established in 1971 and carried on Comcast to around 10,000 households, arrived at the station Tuesday morning to find the facility ransacked and smelling “like a barn,” the News said. The bear had done the type of business in the station that bears are more commonly known to do in the woods.
The animal opened the fridge and pulled everything out, leaving it strewn across the floor, and overturned the general manager’s filing cabinet for a bag a cheese puffs. It was said to walk by the station’s studio cameras and computers, negotiating power cords and leaving the desks untouched, to get to the refrigerator.
Bears were raiding the station’s trash cans a few years ago, prompting the installation of bear-proof trash cans. The walk-in incident puts the station at risk of more bear visits now that it’s been identified as a source of cheese puffs, wild life officials indicated. Intentionally feeding bears in the high country is an actionable offense costing anywhere from $250 for first-timers to $999 for four strikes.
A staff member of GrassRoots TV described the bear as “polite” because it “didn’t touch the equipment, and he didn’t touch our beer.”
