Bear found at school sniffing around Mrs. Salmon’s classroom

Well, usually you find salmon in schools.

It was a young black bear captured on camera touring a school in Kern County, California, on Tuesday. Specifically, the bear was exploring the classroom teacher Elaine Salmon.

“I opened the door to my classroom and this bear came charging at the door,” Salmon, who was preparing for the start of the school year at Peak to Peak Mountain Charter School in Pine Mountain Club, told KERO-TV in Bakersfield.

Salmon quickly closed the door, leaving the bear in the room. She called her husband, Ian Sawrey, a retired police officer who now happens to own a business that specializes in deterring bears, according to Bakersfield TV station KGET.

“The welfare of the bear was a concern,” Sawrey told The Dodo. “We have lived in this community with bears for many years, so harming the bears is not in our nature. The goal was to get the bear out of the classroom safely.”

However, helping the bear leave the classroom proved difficult because “you have to hold the door open for it to stay open,” Salmon told KERO.

Sawrey did just that, and the bear ran past him into the mountains.

Video shows the bear explore the room quietly. In the end, the only damage was to earthquake emergency kits that contained granola bars.

K-8 school slogan displayed on its website is, appropriately, ‘Home of the Bears’.

California has an estimated one 25,000 to 35,000 black bears, which, like those in Salmon’s classroom, are often cinnamon brown in color.

If a black bear comes in, the general advice is to leave the doors open, slowly back away and get to a safe location so the bear can escape on its own, and then call 911 if help is needed.