A friend was surveyor for a major project in western Momtana, next to Idaho. He said he learned the hard way to leave the door lached (the bears could open the latch) and thus enter, satisfy themselves there was nothing to eat, and leave.
This option, which was workable for a survey office with no food, was not available to the homeowner
Attempts to bar the door merely p*ssed off the 'bar. The resulting damage was quite impressive.
Moral: Bears aren;'t cute furry people. Sorry, PETApersons.
No kidding? Bears aren't really furry people?
The point is, that the homeowners didn't even TRY to secure the crawl space and weren't bothered until they realised that their insurance check wasn't in the mail.
You'd think that if they'd owned the cabin for 40 years, as the article states, that they might have some incling as to what was living around them.
Apparently not only are they stupid but oblivious to their surroundings.