A three-legged black bear wandered onto the patio of a house in Florida. He trudged by the pool. He ambled up to a fish tank and gnawed on a container of guppy food. Then he went for the refrigerator, grabbed two cans of White Claw hard seltzer and tossed away a third.
It was a typical day in the neighborhood of Magnolia Plantation — a subdivision of about 500 houses in Lake Mary, just north of Orlando — where the three-legged bear makes himself at home so often that residents have given him a name befitting a creature with just a trio of limbs: Tripod.
“I would not say he was the worst guest, because it is him,” said Josaury Faneite-Diglio, whose yard was littered on Sunday with the rubbish that Tripod left behind like the castoffs of some uninvited reveler. “He has a special place for the residents of Magnolia Plantation.”
People who live in Central Florida and in other parts of the state have become accustomed to visits by wildlife that wander, like bears and deer, or slither, like snakes, into yards, defying the man-made concept of property lines imposed on land abutting reserves and forests.