A bear walked straight into a restaurant in Pocono Pines, Pennsylvania, last Friday night, strolling up to the host stand like it was waiting to be seated before heading back outside to rummage through the dumpster. Security cameras caught the entire encounter on tape, turning an ordinary dinner shift into a viral moment of wildlife colliding with small-town commerce.
The footage, first reported by CBS News Philadelphia, shows the animal wandering inside and approaching the host stand before making its way out back, where it dug through the restaurant's dumpster. The station's report does not specify whether staff or customers were present at the time, nor does it detail what happened to the bear afterward. The restaurant's name was not confirmed in the report, though the Pocono Pines area is home to long-running eateries like Jubilee Restaurant, which describes itself as sitting in the heart of the Pocono Mountains and serving hearty breakfast platters daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. after more than five decades in business.
A Familiar Pattern in Bear Country
Dumpster-diving bears are nothing new in the Poconos. Just up the road in Lake Harmony, a black bear was recently caught on video climbing onto a dumpster, seizing a full trash bag, dragging it onto the pavement and tearing it open, according to The Cool Down. That footage, captured by a resident named Ray Doherty, showed the bear perched on a metal dumpster before lowering itself down with the bag in tow.
Wildlife experts have long pointed to easy access as the root of the problem. Unsecured garbage tends to draw animals into residential and commercial areas, the outlet notes, and once a bear finds a reliable food source, it keeps coming back as long as that food remains available, according to a column in the Pocono Record.
Pennsylvania's Growing Bear Population
Part of the reason encounters like this keep happening comes down to numbers. The Pocono Record reports that Pennsylvania's black bear population has been climbing as development pushes further into bear habitat, with an estimated 18,000 or more bears statewide. The state's own wildlife agency offers differing figures on its website: the Pennsylvania Game Commission puts the current total at roughly 19,000 in one page, while another of its pages describes growth from about 4,000 bears in the 1970s to around 18,000 today. Whichever number is most precise, the trend line points the same direction — more bears, more often wandering into places where people eat.
Colorado Restaurants Face Their Own Bear Troubles
Pennsylvania isn't alone in dealing with bears that have lost their fear of commercial kitchens. In Ouray, Colorado, a large bear broke into the Full Tilt restaurant on September 23 and had to be let out by sheriff's deputies after it wandered near the front window and a Pac-Man arcade machine, according to the Ouray County Plaindealer. The bear left behind a large pile of excrement on the wooden floor before exiting on its own and moving on, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman John Livingston told the paper.
That incident is part of a broader surge in Colorado. The Plaindealer reported that the state had logged 10,820 bear reports as of the week before its story published, an increase of more than 800 from the previous week, with Ouray County alone receiving 126 reports compared to just 24 at the same point the year before. The outlet attributes the spike to a difficult year for the animals, driven by drought, wildfire and a late spring freeze that damaged natural food supplies — conditions that push hungry bears toward human food sources whether they're in the Rockies or the Poconos.
