Black bear scares staff, steals 60 cupcakes from Connecticut bakery

A hungry four-footed black bear entered the garage of a Connecticut bakery on Wednesday, scared several employees before dragging a container of cupcakes into the parking lot.

Workers at Taste by Spellbound were loading cakes into a van for delivery when the scary thief showed up. Miriam Stephens, the bakery’s owner, took to Instagram to elaborate on the incident, saying she heard employee Maureen Williams screaming there was a bear in the garage.

Recounting before TV station WTNH, Williams said she yelled to scare away the animal but it retreated and came back thrice. She said she backed out of the garage and ran as the bear charged at her.

Bakery workers were seen in surveillance video obtained by the TV station walking around the side of the business to try to scare the animal, but then backing off after it scares them.

The bear finally left after a baker honked a car horn, Williams said. The thief was out of sight by the time officers from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (Deep) arrived. It ate some 60 cupcakes from the container, Stephens said.

No one was injured, fortunately. The scary encounter is just one of a series of recent troublesome interactions between humans and black bears in Connecticut. Currently, there could be around 1,000 to 1,200 black bears in the state.

While there were a couple of attacks last year, there has already been an incident this year involving a 74-year-old woman who suffered bites to her arms and legs when she was attacked while walking her dog in a suburb of Hartford, the state capital.

The frequency and severity of bear-human interactions in Connecticut seem to have been increasing.