Black Bear Who Has His Own Twitter Page Goes On The Lam, Startles Texting Man

April 10 2012, Published 7:00 a.m. ET

By Debbie Emery - RadarOnline.com Reporter

A black bear has turned into a Hollywood celebrity after taking police on a wild chase around a Los Angeles County suburb, and RadarOnline.com has video of the caper that was caught on tape.

Nicknamed Glen Bearian by local residents, the approximately 400 pound bear even boasts his own Twitter page, which tracks his favorite eating habits and extracurricular activities around the Montrose, Calif. neighborhood, reported KABC-TV.

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“Please don’t be afraid of me,” Bearian tweeted last week to his now more than 400 followers. “I won’t eat you. Unless you’re a meatball from Costco. Are you?” On Tuesday, however, the tweets were all about his great adventure, which led him to a residential backyard at 3:30 a.m., where local news choppers began tracking his every move for the rest of the morning.

While it would be safe to assume that the mammoth black bear would be hard to miss, one man was so engrossed with texting on his phone that he almost walked smack into him, before taking flight in the opposite direction.

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"I came down the stairs, and the bear was right here," said Vaz Tervardanyan. "He saw me, probably like 10 feet away or even less, and the bear starts coming up the stairs. I turned back and ran for my life."

Local news footage of his big fright has become an Internet hit, with Glen Bearian’s Twitter followers all warning of the perils of texting while walking. “This is why you shouldn't walk and text. Because you might miss the bear,” came the repeated warning.

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After slipping between parked cars, climbing over fences and squeezing behind homes, Bearian was finally stopped in his tracks by the Department of Fish and Game employees, who sedated him with three tranquilizers, before loading him into a truck to be relocated to a more bear-friendly area.

“The weather got warm a couple weeks ago, and he woke up, and he's been hungry," explained Fish and Game Lt. Martin Wall, who thinks that he came from a nearby flood-control channel.