Wake the Lakes “Weird and Wacky Wednesday” 9-13-23

A three-legged bear celebrated the recent Labor Day weekend much like two-legged humans would, raiding a mini fridge and downing White Claws at a Florida home.  Video captured the encounter at a home in the Orlando suburb of Lake Mary on Sunday. It was around 5 p.m. when Josaury Faneite-Diglio got a notification from her security camera and saw that a bear known locally as Tripod was paying a visit, she told a local TV station.  Faneite-Diglio’s 13-year-old son, Joseph, was home to capture the encounter on his cellphone.  Home-security video shows Joseph quieting the family dog Bruno, who had alerted him to Tripod’s presence. Joseph recognized the locally famous bear almost immediately.  “He’s coming close. This guy’s trying to eat the food here,” Joseph said as he filmed, releasing a string of expletives as he narrates. He said. “This is like, once in a lifetime. “I feel like I gotta lock all the doors now,” he says as Tripod slowly hobbles through toward the window where Joseph is filming. “I’ve never been this close to a bear.”  Joseph continues filming while Tripod makes his way to the mini fridge. To Joseph’s surprise, he opens the fridge door with no trouble.  “Oh, look, he just opened the door!” Joseph says, laughing. “He’s about to take the beer!”  By the time Tripod left, he drank three White Claw hard seltzers, paired with some fish food the family leaves out by a fish tank.  “I was not scared because we know the bear really well,” she told the station. “He lives here; we respect their habitat as much as we can.”