Bear Roams GM Auto Dealership, Thinks Cars Suck, Takes Dump to Show Disapproval
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
May 03, 2005
Maybe he was just looking for a good deal on a car.
Staffers at Automobile International in North Clarendon, Vt., walked into work Monday morning to discover that a bear had roamed through the building over the weekend, reports the Rutland (Vt.) Herald.
"We thought at first it was a break-in," said co-owner A.J. Michel, "until we saw the tracks."
The furry intruder, thought to be a black bear, common in the Northeast, broke though a display window sometime Sunday and tried every possible exit before finally going back out the way it came.
Smudges were on the windows. Claw marks were on the desks and walls. Ceiling tiles were knocked loose. A pile of bear droppings lay in the middle of the showroom floor.
"I found an invoice on my desk with a big paw print on it," saleswoman Mitzi Newton told the newspaper. "It gives me the heebie-jeebies."
Don Isabelle, the local game warden, thinks the bear probably was scared or even hit by a car traveling busy Route 7 right outside the dealership's windows.
"Usually, there's food involved if they're breaking into houses, and there was none of that involved in this situation," said Isabelle. "Or maybe he just wanted to test-drive a car and didn't want to wait until they were open."
Speaking of the showroom cars, they were just about the only items in the dealership left untouched.
Celeste Michel, A.J. Michel's sister, thought it might be time for a sales event to pay for the damage.
"We're thinking of offering a bear promotional," she told the Herald. "We're going to call it the 'bear minimum' on prices."