EASTON, NJ, and BEAVERCREEK, OH -- Two YMCAs recently had unique visitors to their facilities. The Family Y of Easton, Phillipsburg and Vicinity (NJ) had a bear cub on its grounds, and the Beavercreek Y (OH) had a deer in its pool.
Staff members at the Family Y of Easton, Phillipsburg and Vicinity spotted the bear last Thursday and called the police.
“After a little bit, the bear climbed down and went into the woods. We all stayed back. Several minutes later, (game commission personnel) came out of the woods with the cub in a blanket and took it away,” Family YMCA CEO Nick Ciambrone told The Express-Times. “The game commission did a terrific job.”
The incident at the Y lasted about 90 minutes. Ciambrone told the newspaper that no one was in danger.
The bear cub was believed to be 15 months old and 100 pounds. At this time of year, the mother bear goes into a breeding cycle and abandons her cubs in a safe area to prevent them from being harmed by adult males, the newspaper reported.
At the Beavercreek Y in Beavercreek, OH, Y staff also had a surprising encounter with nature. Last Saturday, a deer jumped through a pair of large windows adjacent to the Y’s pool area.
David Thompson, vice president for the YMCA of Greater Dayton, the umbrella organization over the Beavercreek Y, told the Dayton Daily News that the momentum of the jump probably propelled the deer across a five-foot-wide deck into the chlorinated water.
After hearing the crash, a Y employee found the deer already out of the water, running around the room and knocking into storage shelving and pool equipment. Local police were called and eventually got the deer out of the building, but it ran into a nearby wooded area, the newspaper reported.
After the incident, a team of scuba divers retrieved an antler from the bottom of the pool’s 15-foot deep end, as well as shards of glass from the pool floor. A cleaning crew scrubbed down and sanitized the deck area. They also vacuumed and re-chlorinated the pool water, according to the newspaper.
The Y reopened the pool to patrons Sunday afternoon.