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3 Bears Break Into U.S. Restaurant, Find No Porridge

The salami, however, was juuuuust right.

DENVER ― They couldn't find porridge or, for that matter, Goldilocks.

But that was of little concern to the three bears that broke into a pizza shop in Estes Park, Colorado, this week.

Judging from surveillance footage of the early Sunday heist, the ursine family ― unlike Goldilocks ― was perfectly content eating food that wasn't "just right." The mother bear and her two cubs made a meal of cold pizza dough and salami, rifling through a trash can and a prep table to find it.

Antonio's Real New York Pizza shared the video on Facebook. The bears gained entrance to the kitchen by ripping the drive-through window out of the wall, according to the restaurant. They ate more than 40 pounds of dough and caused around $1,000 in damage.

Restaurant owner Antonio DeSousa asked that the bears be treated with mercy if they're caught.

"The bears need help and we need to figure out how to help them," DeSousa told "Inside Edition." "We moved into the woods knowing full well they existed, and the idea they should die because they're starving is ridiculous."

Estes Park passed an ordinance earlier this year requiring bear-proof trash containers. DeSousa speculated the law "forced the bears' paws" and inspired a more creative hunt for food.

DeSousa elaborated on his thinking in a followup Facebook post:

I've been thinking about this all day and am embarrassed by the "rules" in place for the wildlife we've encroached upon. A bear's sense of smell is 2100 times ours. They can smell your blood but don't kill you for it, yet if they are removed from town and dropped off in some random place, then use their sense of smell to return, they are killed. All they want is calories with which to hibernate. Man kills for far less than food to eat. We have to come up with a better set of deterrents than creating rules which ensure their euthanization based on the need to eat.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife didn't immediately respond to a call from HuffPost.

Bears are a familiar concern in Estes Park. So far this year, the town's emergency dispatch has fielded around 170 bear-related calls, reports the Estes Park Trail-Gazette.

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