A beautiful story comes out of Sevier County, Tennessee about a momma black bear found using a crawl space underneath a homeowner’s home for a den.
The homeowner’s learned about the bear’s presence after the home experienced a gas leak and had to hire a professional to come to fix it. They called a gas repairman to crawl underneath the house to see where the problem was coming from and that’s when they spotted the black bear and called wildlife authorities to come remove it.
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency arrived and were able to shoo the bear away allowing the repairmen to get underneath the house and start working. As they did, they found the bear had damaged the ductwork and insulation that ultimately lead to the gas leak.
What gave them a major surprise, though, is they found three bear cubs had recently been born there weighing about two pounds each. The cubs were immediately rushed to a veterinarian hospital where they were named Jasmine, Jeannie, and Magic Bear and fed every three hours.
The gas leak got fixed which was good for the homeowner but the Appalachian Bear Rescue were now very concerned that the cubs were probably going to have to be raised without a mother. However, that’s when the unexpected happened.
The mother bear came back to the den! When wildlife officials found out about it they rushed the cubs back to the crawl space and handed them back to the mother through a small hole in the side of the house.
“With all the humans going in and out of the crawl space, we were sure she’d never come back. But she did. And we’re happy she did. Learning never ends,” Appalachian Bear Rescue shared in a video on Facebook.