Lured by Girl Scout cookies and McDonald’s, bears break into Florida woman’s pickup, destroy interior

Orlando Sentinel (FL)

May 22-- May 22--When a Florida family heard horn honking and vehicle doors slamming repeatedly outside their home at about midnight Monday, they feared intruders.

They were correct, but it wasn't exactly what they thought. It was a group of bears ransacking Kylie Johnson's Ford F-150 pickup truck, ripping the interior to shreds and shattering the glass of the sunroof.

"It's 12am, the car horn starts blaring outside we freak out the car doors are open outside (wtf) so we call 911," Johnson posted on Facebook along with a photo and video of her trashed truck. "They send out 4 cars and a helicopter, only for the dispatcher to tell me 'Ma'am, it's a family affair of bears."

Johnson thinks the hungry scavengers may have been lured by crumbs from her 3-year-old son's McDonald's or Chick-fil-A drive-thru meals, or by the lingering scent of two boxes of Tagalongs Girl Scout cookies that she'd had in her center console, she told Fox 4 News.

It happened at about 11:45 pm in a heavily wooded area of rural Collier County in southwest Florida, about 18 miles east of Naples, near the edge of the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.

Photos posted by the Collier County Sheriff's Office show the white truck eviscerated. The bears damaged the seats and ripped away door panels and the headliner, leaving dangling wires, exposed metal and chewed-up foam headrests.

When deputies arrived, they discovered "a family of bears outside the home."

The animals soon left on their own, but returned to the scene at least 10 times that night, Fox 4 News reported.

Cellphone video that the family gave the TV station shows a bear cub on the roof of the pickup.

Johnson posted on Facebook that deputies advised her to "Clean up your chicken nuggets."

She added that she had no idea whether her auto insurance company would believe her when she called to tell them "a family of FRICKING BEARS broke INTO my truck and went to town."

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