Runaway bears steal honey and sleep it off

IN THE fairy tale, Goldilocks enters the home of the three bears to eat their porridge and sleep in their beds.

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But at the Wildwood Devon onservation park in Britain, it’s the bears who are doing the breaking and entering - and sleeping.

Two young bears named Lucy and Mish escaped from their enclosure earlier this week and headed straight for their food store, where they gobbled up a week's worth of honey before falling asleep, the park said on social media.

Upon learning about the two escapees, staff quickly escorted the 16 visitors on-site to a secure building, following the park’s “code red” protocol, said Mark Habben, the director of zoological operations at Wildwood Trust, the conservation charity that runs the park in southwest England. The police arrived, as did the emergency team armed with firearms, prepared for the worst, he said.

But the 5-year-old bears, much like most human 5-year-olds, appeared to want snacks more than anything else. The bears never made it beyond the staff-only food storage area, where park staff monitored them on the ground and by CCTV until they voluntarily returned to their enclosure.

The food delivery had just arrived an hour before, Habben said in an interview, and the bears bypassed the vegetables to head straight for the sweet treats.

“Just like kids,” he laughed.