SIMSBURY, Conn. — Sarah Loving was enjoying a nice lunch with her husband and two young children when she glanced out her window and spotted two bears wandering through her backyard in Simsbury, Connecticut.
This sight wasn’t entirely unusual for the area. In recent years, sightings of bears have become more common in Simsbury, a suburban town of 24,500 residents located about 12 miles northwest of Hartford. Many residents have discovered overturned garbage cans on “trash day,” evidence of bears scrounging for food.
However, Sarah was taken aback when one of the bears approached her children’s wooden playset and started climbing the stairs. She quickly began filming, curious about what this bear would do next.
To her surprise, the bear reached the top and slid down the slide, as if it had done this many times before. The video shows the bear sliding headfirst, using its paws to soften its landing in a pile of sand below. Afterward, it relaxed for a moment, surveying its surroundings.
The bears didn’t stay long, spending about 10 minutes in the yard before wandering off to the neighbor’s property. “They seemed very relaxed on the playscape,” Sarah commented, sharing that her family had moved to Simsbury two years ago, unaware they might encounter bears. “We joked that they must have done this before, but we had never seen anything like that.”
