Bear spotted in Glendale rifling through trash cans

A Glendale resident says she saw a 400-pound bear in Chevy Chase Canyon sifting through trash two nights in a row.

"When I saw it, I was scared," said Caroline Muradian, who spotted the bear rummaging through her trash in the 2500 block of East Chevy Chase on Tuesday night.

The bear was likely after the chicken, rice and pastries that she had thrown in the trash earlier that day, she told the Glendale News-Press.

The bear didn’t appear to be bothered, Muradian added, even after police arrived and tried to shoo it away. Twenty minutes later the bear lumbered to a nearby hillside and disappeared.

Residents of the neighborhood reported seeing the same bear Monday night, Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. The latest sightings come just a month after a headline-grabbing black bear with a taste for Costco meatballs -- dubbed "Glen Bearian" on a Twitter account -- was relocated to the Angeles National Forest after weeks of snacking off trash bins in north Glendale and La Crescenta.

Officials with the California Department of Fish and Game said they couldn’t immediately confirm if the bear seen this week was Glen Bearian, which was roughly the same size as the bear described in the latest sightings. Glen Bearian was tagged before being released.

"There is always a chance that a bear removed from one area could return to that same area," Fish and Game spokesman Andrew Hughan said in an email.

But state officials generally do not intervene unless there is an immediate threat to public safety. Officials once again warned residents not to leave their trash bins out overnight, lest they wind up feeding bears and other wildlife.

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Photo: It's not known whether the black bear removed from a Glendale neighborhood last month, above, is the same bear seen this week in Chevy Chase Canyon. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times.