A 180-pound young black bear gatecrashed a baby's first birthday party on Saturday by literally falling through the skylight into a living room of a suburban Juneau, Alaska, home, USA Today reported. Wildlife officials shot and killed the party animal inside a different home later in the day.
Alicia Bishop, 33, and Glenn Merrill, 45, were making last-minute preparations and waiting for guests and family to arrive for baby Jackson's birthday when the suspected black bear fell through a skylight after it had made its way on to the roof and was walking across it, the Juneau Empire reported.
"I was literally in the room, and I heard this cracking," father and homeowner Glenn Merrill told the paper. "The next thing you know, there's this bear that, I mean literally, fell right from (the skylight). It was like one meter away from me."
As both participants stared at each other in disbelief, Merrill quietly inched away, asking his parents to take the baby upstairs. He then slipped into another room and watched the young bear recover from the fall.
Bishop, who was standing in the kitchen behind a glass door, watched as the bear calmly moved to help itself to some lemon blueberry and peanut butter cupcakes intended for the child's birthday bash. "The bear walks over and puts its paws up on the table and starts licking his birthday cupcakes, and I'm just like, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" Bishop told the newspaper.
The couple was able to chase it outside through a door, but the bear kept on returning. "It was up by the window like, 'I want more cupcakes,'" Bishop said. The family was forced to call 911 and spray mace at it until it walked into the woods.
Half an hour later, a bear suspected to be the same animal walked inside another occupied house and was shot by the Juneau Police Department. The bear ran behind the house, where it was later found dead.
