Black bears have entered dozens of homes in the Tahoe Lake area while scavenging for food.
Around Lake Tahoe, California officials are on the lookout for an unexpected threat: a 500-pound black bear called "Hank the Tank" that has broken into more than two dozen homes for food.
Hank is twice the size of an average black bear and has reportedly broken windows and doors in communities.
Black bear populations have exploded in recent years, tripling in size over the past three decades. This, along with the fact that wildfires have destroyed their natural habitat, have led the animals to visit people's homes, cars and garbage cans in search of food.
"They've learned how to operate car doors after they've eaten food in cars," Lieutenant Jeff Roberson of the South Lake Tahoe Police Department told TODAY. “Some of them have figured out how French doors work to get into the house. A mama bear was even seen teaching her cubs to enter that French door.”
Humans are not in the food chain for bears, but they can become violent when the creatures surround them or are taken by surprise.
"I saw a claw just before I started hitting her," North Lake Tahoe resident Laurel-Rose von Hoffman-Kurzy told TODAY of an attack in November.
"I was like, 'Oh my god, there's a bear and it's taking my dog,'" she told TODAY just after the encounter in June. "It's lifting him off the ground, and if I don't do something about it, who knows what could happen to him."
Meanwhile, Hank's fate remains up in the air. Some think that euthanasia is the logical way to handle the situation, while Bear League, an organization dedicated to "living in harmony" with bears and humans, wants to relocate him to a sanctuary.