ONION CREEK, Wash — All the signs were there. Chicken coop and fence ripped apart, feed barrel torn open by long, sharp claws, and in the dirt, massive tracks left behind by the uncommon predator.
Alexandra and Luke Davis are used to wildlife at their rural north Stevens County home, but this was different. This was a grizzly bear.
"The bear, when it came in and tore through here, just tin-canned the feed barrel and rolled it over, actually, about 10 feet from the house," Luke explained.
"This side of the coop was ripped off," Alexandra added. "He ripped that open and was getting chickens out of there."
Despite the grizzly being just feet from their home and right outside a bedroom where one of their children slept, the family still hadn't seen it yet. So, the couple reached out to wildlife officials who set up cameras.
They quickly had their confirmation.
Cameras captured the grizzly pushing down the fence around the coop, all while carrying a chicken in its mouth.
"That's [when] the mama bear in me comes out," Alexandra said. "I'm like, 'Hey, this bear needs to be dealt with because that's too close.'
"You can only do so much against an animal that huge and that fierce," Luke said. "And you definitely don't put yourself between them and what they're going after."
Wildlife officials set a trap and later that night, the bear took the bait.
"I heard the door slam shut," Luke recalled. "And he started rocking and roaring, and, really, raising a ruckus when he got in there."
Luke said the bear continued to make noise for about three hours that night before settling down. The next morning, wildlife officials came and relocated the grizzly.
"He was definitely more than a nuisance," Luke said. "He was a threat and a danger, and [we] just couldn't have that."
Grizzly bears in Washington state are considered endangered. For now, grizzlies are restricted to the Selkirk Mountains in the far northeast corner of the state, although there are plans to reintroduce them to other areas.
Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife says grizzly bears are "occasionally documented in remote areas near the northern border of eastern Washington," but people who live in the area say the signs are more than occasional.
"The people that live out here, we know how many are out here," Alexandra said. "We have to deal with them."
However, she said many of the encounters are never reported to wildlife officials.
"A lot of the people are afraid to speak out about any of it because they don't want to get in trouble because they're protected," she said.
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