SIMSBURY, Conn. — Sarah Loving had just returned home from lunch last Saturday with her husband and two young children when she looked out the window and spotted two bears walking across her backyard in Simsbury, Connecticut.
Her wildlife visitors didn’t really surprise her. In recent years, bears have been pretty common in Simsbury, a suburban community of 24,500, located about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Hartford, where overturned garbage cans are often found along the road on “trash day” after a bear has searched inside for a snack.
But when one of the bears stopped at her family’s wooden playset and began climbing up the stairs, Loving started filming. What came next, took her by surprise.
“He made it to the landing and then went down the slide, like he had done it before,” she said. In the video, the bear nonchalantly slides head first, its front paws breaking its fall in a pile of soft sand at the bottom. The bear then lays there for a few seconds, calmly looking around.
Loving said the pair hung out for a few more minutes before moving on to her neighbor’s yard. Their appearance lasted about 10 minutes.
“They seemed so comfortable on the playscape,” said Loving, whose family moved to Simsbury about two years ago, not knowing they might run across bears. “We just kept joking that they probably have been before, but we have not seen a bear go down playscape before, ever. That was a first.”