VAIL, Colo. (AP) – A 72-year-old woman making pot roast in her kitchen discovered uninvited guests in her home: a bear and her cub.

The unidentified woman walked into the kitchen Thursday and found the bear standing six feet away, police Sgt. Dan Torgerson said. The bear hissed at her and swatted her chest and arm, giving her some minor scratches. The woman then scared it off by yelling and clapping her hands, authorities said.

Torgerson said the bear hissed again and then left through a side door.

“If the bear was trying to hurt her, it very easily could have,” he said. “I think it was just surprised.”

The woman then found a cub in her house and she pushed it out the door, Torgerson said.

That bear and cub are believed to be the same ones that entered another home and ate food off the kitchen counter. The owners refused to let wildlife officials set traps for bears in their homes.

No trash had been left outside at either home but a trash can was found outside on another street and it had apparently been rummaged by a bear. That resident was cited.

Randy Hampton, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, said the bear has learned how to get food from humans and has taught its cub. If captured, he said the bear would be euthanized and its cub euthanized or relocated.

—

NEW YORK (AP) – Dude, where’s my car? And what’s that No Parking sign doing here?

Several Brooklyn residents woke up to find their street empty – because someone had posted a No Parking sign and police had towed their rides.

The sign, which bans parking on a street in the DUMBO neighborhood from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, mysteriously appeared Monday or Tuesday, residents said, and then police started ticketing and towing cars parked there.

But the Department of Transportation says there aren’t any parking restrictions in the area and it doesn’t know who posted the placard, which looks official.

Resident David Bourgeois said he had to pay $205 to retrieve his Mini Cooper, with a $60 ticket on the windshield, from a police pound Wednesday after it was hauled away.

“It’s just outrageous,” he told the Daily News for Friday editions.

The DOT said it would try to dismiss the ticket – and take down the No Parking sign.

—