A California homeowner is speaking out about his interactions with an unwelcome four-legged tenant.
Altadena resident Ken Johnson joined "ABC News Live" on Thursday to discuss the 550-pound brown bear who set up residency under his house just before Thanksgiving.
The bear was eventually removed from the crawl space of his home with help from a California-based wildlife nonprofit.
"I saw this huge monster of a bear coming out of the crawl space. I practically dropped the phone and jumped out of bed. It was -- it was amazing," Johnson said, recounting the moment he saw the bear under his house for the first time.
Johnson said he tried "everything in the book" to coax the bear out from beneath his home, including blowing ammonia through a leaf-blower, putting loud music on for a day, playing a recording of barking dogs in the vents and leaving out a shirt sprayed with cologne.
Nothing seemed to work, he said.
Just as Johnson was running out of options, Ann Bryant, executive director of the animal protection nonprofit the BEAR League -- which is based near Lake Tahoe and works to keep bears and humans living in harmony -- got in touch with the distressed homeowner and arranged to facilitate the bear's removal.
"We knew he had to turn off his gas. We knew he couldn't take a shower, no hot water, and we thought, 'We gotta help this guy, even though it's way out of our area,'" Bryant recalled, speaking with "ABC News Live" on Thursday.
Bryant said the BEAR League contacted Johnson to offer its services, and "two of our people" were ultimately flown in to work on the eviction.
"Within about 10 minutes of getting to his house and looking around to get the lay of the land, we had the bear out," she said.
Bryant said one person was able to crawl underneath the home, "went up behind the bear and scared him and used a paintball gun, [which just has] vegetable oil in it, doesn't got toxin."
Bryant said the team was able to chase the bear off once he emerged from under the house.
Johnson first reported the black bear's presence last month, saying at the time that the animal had been living in the crawl space under his home for over a month.
Bryant told ABC News earlier this week that once the bear was removed from Johnson's home, it went to the crawl space of another home, where it was welcomed by the homeowner and had spent time in the past.
That homeowner had no problem with the bear's presence and did not ask for it to be removed. The bear stayed in that location for one day, according to Bryant.
Following the bear's stay at the second home, the animal moved to a third home, whose owner did not want the bear present, according to Bryant.
Bryant said the BEAR League was contacted at that point to help evict the bear again.
For Bryant, the BEAR League volunteers, and the animal authorities they work with, moving bears away from people and back into safer locations is simply second nature.
"We've done it so many times. It's like it's just part of our lives," she said of her organization's work, adding that she still chases bears out from under houses at 74 years old.
Johnson, meanwhile, said he has since looked at precautionary measures to keep the bear -- and any other wildlife -- out from under his home.
"Every morning, I look at my [outdoor] camera, and it's thankfully empty," Johnson said. "I have bolted up a recessed panel so he can't get his claws around it, and I may just go ahead and buy one of those bear pads and put that on the opening too."
