ATKINSON (AP) – A bear that devoured Greg Johnson’s two pigs remains at large, prompting residents of this rural community to keep close watch on their livestock and tell their children to stay indoors.

“This is a hungry bear,” said game warden Michael Eaton. “We’ve definitely got a serious problem here and we’re very concerned.”

The bear attacked a 40-pound pig last Sunday, Eaton said, and it returned Wednesday night for the remaining pig.

“When I got up Sunday, the grill was tipped over and the first pig was missing,” Johnson said Friday. “I followed a blood trail out into the woods and saw the bear tracks.”

On Wednesday night, he heard the pig squealing and went outside with a shotgun and fired a shot. “That caused the bear to drop the pig,” Johnson said.

But when he went indoors to get a flashlight, the bear grabbed the pig again and headed for the woods.

Johnson said he alerted all his neighbors, including a nearby dairy farm and some people who raise rabbits.

“I’ve lived here seven years and never had a problem,” he said. “Oh, sometimes someone would see one in the spring and then again maybe in the fall. But nothing like this. The kids aren’t sleeping too well.”

Maine’s bears, having just emerged from winter hibernation, are at their lowest weight, and hungry, Eaton said, but the food supply is at its lowest because berries have yet to emerge.

There are a handful of incidents like this each spring, said Mark Latti, spokesman for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

This year, he said, black bears killed chickens near Parsonsfield and sheep near the Maine-New Hampshire line. Administrators kept schoolchildren inside at recess recently in Bridgton, where a pair of bears had been marauding neighborhood bird feeders and garbage cans.

In another incident, a bear tipped over a pan of bacon and raided a cooler belonging to three Massachusetts campers along the Saco River. Latti said the bruin drove the campers into their tent.

Eaton said warden biologist Douglas Kane will visit the Johnson home Sunday to try to trap the bear.

“It is likely the bear will have to be disposed of, rather than relocated,” Kane said. “Once they find out how easy it is to get domestic animals, it isn’t going to stop.”