A trap was set for a bear living under an Altadena home for a month. It caught the wrong bear

Sandra McDonald, Los Angeles Times on Dec 26, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — A trap meant to capture a bear that’s been under an Altadena home for a month was sprung but was triggered by the wrong beast.

Biologists at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have had a bear trap set at Ken Johnson’s house since Dec. 9 in an attempt to capture a 550-pound male black bear that wedged itself in the crawl space of his home a month ago.

After weeks of unsuccessfully setting out caramel- and cherry-flavored bait and noisemakers in the hopes of flushing the bear out, it seemed like all of the efforts had paid off last week. Johnson heard the rattling of the metal cage from inside his home Dec. 16, but realized quickly it wasn’t the right bear.

“I knew my bear hadn’t gone out because I’ve got enough cameras on it,” Johnson said.

The bear they did catch was tagged and released in a nearby suitable habitat, the department confirmed.

Christmas Day made it 31 days since the bear, called Yellow 2120 by researchers, squeezed itself into a small opening underneath Johnson’s home.

But visits from bears are not unique in Altadena, situated at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Johnson and his neighbors constantly see bears, especially on trash day.

In fact, a few weeks ago, a different bear poked its head down into the crawl space and was scared off by Yellow 2120, Johnson told the Los Angeles Times previously.

“It’s funny but it’s not,” Johnson said. He’s jury-rigged a burglar alarm with foam so it makes a clattering sound loud enough for the neighbor’s Ring camera to pick up, he said. He’s burned CDs with hours of dog barking audio and pointed speakers into the vents, all in the hopes of flushing Yellow 2120 out.

None of it has worked.

“I just don’t feel completely at home in my own house, as long as he’s under there,” Johnson said.

After capturing the wrong bear, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife removed the trap after deciding Yellow 2120 wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, the department said. Based on the bear’s tags, department officials recognized Yellow 2120 as a bear that was trapped in the last year near Altadena and relocated about 10 miles from Johnson’s house, but returned in the last few months.

It’s still unsettling to hear the bear move around underneath the house even though it’s been a month, Johnson said, calling the saga a “roller coaster.” The bear growled at him through a vent on the floor of the living room on Tuesday, he said.

“I get days where I feel that he’s asleep and it’s just a matter of time, other days I feel uncomfortable like he’s gonna break more things under the house,” Johnson said.

The department was hopeful that the rain over the holiday could wash uncomfortable human smells away from the crawl space so Yellow 2120 would feel more at ease crawling out and leaving, Johnson said, but the storm only left him agitated.

“I could hear him moving around. It was like a house of horrors,” Johnson said.

Yellow 2120 seems to be exercising his tenants rights, too; at some point he turned on a gas line under the house, so Johnson had to turn the line off and is now living without hot water.

“It’s really awful,” he said.