Black bear crashes Easter egg hunt, eats all the candy

WINDSOR, Conn. (WFSB/Gray News) – Easter egg hunts in Connecticut are … different.

While most people nationwide probably enjoyed their egg hunts without wildlife interruption, several Connecticut residents told WFSB that bears became part of the game, rooting through plastic eggs and eating the candy inside.

One incident happened in the town of Windsor, where Jennifer Lopez captured video of a black bear opening the eggs and eating the candy.

“All of a sudden, I hear shuffling or leaves, assuming it was the squirrels or chipmunks. However, I was in for an awakening when I looked up and saw a mother bear with her cub. She worked her way to the eggs and started eating the chocolate,” Lopez said.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) said that giving bears easy access to food can become a bad habit, leading to the animals becoming habituated, comfortable and unafraid of people.

DEEP said it’s critically important to minimize enticing bears with food in any way, as human-bear conflicts continue to rise. In 2022 in Connecticut, bears entered people’s homes 67 times, surpassing the previous yearly record of 45, and sharply increasing from seven years ago when bears entered homes less than 10 times annually.

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