Mother bear and cubs take up residence under family's home in New Jersey

OAKLAND, New Jersey -- A New Jersey family says they have been sharing their home with a mother bear and her four cubs living right under their house.

On Tuesday, the entire family of bears finally emerged after months in the den. One little cub even needed a quick rescue after getting stuck.

"So they were living under here because the previous owners when they built this addition, they dug a foundation under half of it," said resident Veronica O'Brien-Lim.

O'Brien-Lim is talking about her uninvited tenants living rent-free under her home. At first they were adorable, but lately... not so much.

These days at night they've been going through the neighbors' trash and bringing it back and chewing on wires to the central air unit.

So she called NJDEP Fish & Wildlife.

"It seems like any intervention is really a last course of action," she said. "If they haze the mother out, she would possibly run and abandon the cubs, and then they would have to find another sow to basically put them with. Or if they tranquilized her and caught the cubs, they would have to create a new den for them nearby."

But she says she was told the bears would likely move on after a day or two. That was two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood has become somewhat of a spectacle, causing traffic jams up and down their quiet Oakland block.

"The first week after she posted that they were under there before they started coming out really, it was like paparazzi here, cars driving by, people walking by, where are the bears? It's not a zoo," said neighbor Donna VanRy.

Then on Tuesday morning for the first time since the fall, the bears left the den.

A neighbor heard one of the cubs screaming in his backyard.

"Then I went down and looked at a little cub trying to get over fence couldn't make it," neighbor Ray Miller said

A Fish and Wildlife team freed the cub and reunited it with its mother. They think they came out looking for food because of the warm weather, but they could return later Tuesday or in the fall to hibernate.

So the Lim family is being advised to board up the space under their home.

NJDEP Fish & Wildlife says, "Based on the site visit, the bear is in the process of moving its cubs. NJDEP Fish & Wildlife reminds the public of the importance of securing trash and other possible sources of food that can attract bears to properties."