Well hello, Smokey

KENAI, Alaska - A man awakened by a bump in the night went to investigate and found an intruder, but it wasn't a burglar. Instead, Blaine Harling found himself face to snout with a black bear that had come in through an open window.

Harling, 19, has been staying at the cabin belonging to his grandparents, Vic and Jill Harling. Vic Harling said his grandson was sleeping in the basement Oct. 7 when a noise upstairs woke him.

"He thought it was the blinds flopping in the window from a two feet wide, by five feet high, crank-out window that he had left open for ventilation," he said.

The screened window was open just 18 inches, but that was enough for the adult black bear to slip through.

"He walked into the kitchen and it was just standing there, about three feet away, in front of the refrigerator," Harling said. "So he grabbed the first thing he could which was a shampoo bottle, or a lotion bottle, something like that, and he whipped it at the bear and then he took-off back down to basement."

Harling pushed a dresser in front of the door and called Alaska State Troopers, who contacted the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The teenager also called his grandparents. After he persuaded them he wasn't joking, they told him how to unlock their gun cabinet and he armed himself with a .44-caliber and a .45-caliber handgun, said Jill Harling.