How to avoid bear encounters • Do not leave trash outside your home. If you have to, make sure to use a bear-proof container. • Do not put bird feeders in your yard from March to November when bears are active. But if you do, hang them 10 feet from the ground and 10 feet away from anything a bear can climb. • Do not leave pet food or bird seed supplies outside.

Chris Hess heard some loud noises in his house just outside Estes Park on Wednesday night, got up to investigate and found himself face to face with a bear.

“I was lying in bed, and I heard a lot of racket, and I wondered what my cats were doing,” Hess said. “I wondered what in heaven’s name they were doing.”

Before going to investigate, he stepped into his closet. When he stepped back out, he was 5 feet from a large black bear.

“The bear was standing in my bedroom at the foot of my bed,” Hess said. “We came face to face, and I scared him. I yelled at him to get out and threw my hands in the air.”

The bear went back upstairs and encountered Hess’ sister coming down the hallway, spurring the man to try to distract the bear and chase it from the house.

The bear then went into another bedroom in an attempt to escape through a window. When it couldn’t escape that way, it came back out and started walking toward Hess, who yelled and raised his arms to try to chase the bear out of the house.

This time, the bear went into the kitchen and left the same way Hess believes it got into the house — through the door to the outside. That particular door has a lever handle that opens when you push down, and Hess believes the bear was able to work the handle.

“I had cookies sitting on the counter,” Hess said.

But the bear didn’t eat them.

“My only assumption was he walked in the house, and the door closed behind him, and he was focused on trying to find a way out,” he said.

The bear did not break in, and the only damage was to two screens on windows as the animal was trying to find a way out of the house.

“Based on his paw prints, I want to say he would be 6 or 7 feet if he stood up,” Hess said.

Hess did not call Colorado Parks and Wildlife because he lives in a forested area, and he did not want the bear to have one strike against it for a human encounter. He said he has seen bears around his home before, but never inside.

He takes steps every spring to bear-proof the house, including locking the doors and not leaving out a grill. But he hadn’t done so yet this year.

“I just figured you don’t start to see the bears until April,” Hess said. “I figured it was way too early to start bear-proofing — until now.”

According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, bears are active in Colorado from mid-March through November, when they go into their dens for the winter. So far this year, one bear was spotted in Douglas County during a stretch of nice weather, and then returned to hibernation.

“Our bears don’t do true hibernation,” said Jennifer Churchill, spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “If we have warm days, they might peek their heads out. … It really just depends upon the weather. As soon as the weather stays consistently warm, the bears come out. It’s usually March or April.”

When the bears emerge, they are constantly looking for food. Their resourcefulness may lead them to homes, cars and campgrounds, particularly if people leave out trash and bird feeders.

“Our neighborhoods become supermarkets for bears, and that’s not what any of us want,” Churchill said. “We want our bears to stay wild and enjoy them from a distance.”

If residents encounter a bear, wildlife officials advise them to yell and make loud noises to chase it away, but not to approach the bear — exactly what Hess did.

He thought about grabbing his camera, but he said he was too focused on chasing the bear out of the house. And now that the adrenaline rush has worn off, he is awed by the experience of having a bear inside the house.

Pamela Johnson: 970-669-5050, ext. 526, johnsonp@reporter-herald.com, www.twitter.com/RHPamelaJ.