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When a Colorado black bear was unable to pry open a dumpster behind a cannabis shop, the animal made off with the whole thing instead.

Surveillance footage from The Bud Depot in Lyons., Colo., caught the hungry creature bursting through a locked fence door to access the garbage bin.

After trying in vain to get through the dumpster's metal locks, the bear stands up on its hind legs and carefully drags it through the fence door and out into the alley for several metres before finally giving up.

"Seeing the video of that definitely blew my mind," Bud Shop employee Nikko Garza told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.

📍 Lyons, Colo.<br><br>A bear breaks through a fence, sniffs around for trash.<br>The bear backs the trash dumpster out.<br>The bear tries to get into the dumpster, but cannot.<br>It tries to take the bear resistant dumpster home with him, but cannot.<br><br>No reward for this bear 🤗 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BearAware?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BearAware</a> <a href="https://t.co/jwTjnXWwhr">pic.twitter.com/jwTjnXWwhr</a> —@CPW_NE

The footage was shared on Twitter by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife department.

"For us, this is a learning opportunity," department spokesman Bill Vogrin said. "These bears will do whatever they can to get food."

Garza says he's seen the bear — or at least one like it — around the area a few times in the small mountain town.

Usually, he said, it goes for the nearby restaurant dumpster, because The Bud Depot keeps its trash behind a locked fence.

But this time, he said, the bear burst through the door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

"But I imagine he's a lot friendlier," he said. "Instead of running toward you, he'll run away."

A view of the inside of the Bud Depot in Lyons, Colo. (Google Street View)

Garza has nicknamed the bear Cheeseburger "just because of all the good food he's been trying to get."

"He loves this grease trap back there," Garza said, referring to the restaurant's dumpster. "He loves just rubbing up against that."

And it's a snack the bear was after at the Bud Depot too. Garza confirmed it wasn't trying to score the shop's weed supply.

"I imagine he could probably smell something from the shop, but as far as the dumpster goes, we don't have any cannabis products in there."

The animal ran off, but Garza says he's spotted another bear, or possibly the same one, once more since the dumpster incident.

Local wildlife officials say they are keeping an eye out for more.

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Produced by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes.