MOSCOW, October 5 (RIA Novosti) – A couple in the remote Russian city of Ust-Ilimsk, in Siberia, called for backup after seeing a wild bear break into their veranda and start eating their dinner, local police said Saturday.
They had cooked the meat and beetroot soup borscht and left it in a saucepan on the veranda to cool, the statement on the Irkutsk region police website says.
The couple, who have been sleeping in their sauna while they renovate their house, were woken up in the night by loud noises, then, through the window, they saw a bear prowling around the porch, the statement says.
They called the local community manager, who looks after the buldings in the dacha village, and watched, helpless, through their sauna window as the animal broke into their veranda and started eating the soup, the statement says.
The police got a call about the incident at about 1 am, the statement says, and sent a team to investigate. Once at the scene, police fired shots into the air and managed to scare the bear back into the woods, but not before it had finished off the couple’s beetroot soup, the statement says.
The statement notes that there have been several instances of hungry bears heading to areas of human habitation and urges locals to be more careful about where they store food.
Updated at 10:50 clarifying the reference to borscht and adding a link to a cookery blog about the soup and its cultural origins