WATCH – Colorado man opens his truck door and finds a bear riding shotgun

Bears in cars in Colorado, not rare… Bears caught in cars by the driver in Colorado, much more rare.

A Colorado contractor got the ride-along he never asked for after opening the passenger door of his pickup truck and coming face-to-face with a black bear sitting in the front seat.

The encounter happened at a home in Steamboat Springs and was captured on homeowner Justin Pickar’s Nest security camera. The footage shows contractor Andy Kerrigan walking up to his truck, opening the passenger door and immediately flinching backward when he finds a bear staring back at him from inside the cab. The bear had apparently climbed in through an open window and was rooting around in an apparent search for food. Kerrigan ran around to the driver’s side and opened that door too, but the bear was in no hurry to leave — apparently content to keep looking for snacks rather than take the exit. It wasn’t until Kerrigan grabbed a wooden plank and used it to convince the bruin that checkout time had arrived that the bear finally bailed. The truck was not seriously damaged.

The video has since gone viral, picked up by UPI, ABC7, CBS Colorado and a wave of social media accounts. For anyone who’s lived in mountain-town Colorado, it’s less a shock and more a reminder: don’t leave your windows down overnight unless you want a 300-pound passenger with no concept of personal space.