By Tim Binnall
An inflatable Grinch that stood outside of a Florida home proved to be no match for a mischievous bear that snatched the holiday decoration on what appears to have been two separate occasions. The curious case reportedly began on Black Friday when Shanick Suarez noticed that the piece depicting the popular Christmas character had mysteriously gone missing from her Naples front yard. Upon receiving a call from a neighbor who found the inflatable, she assumed that the Grinch had simply fallen victim to a prankster who lazily dumped the decoration a few doors down. The retrieved piece was subsequently placed back on Suarez's lawn in a spot covered by a security camera, which seemingly solved the mystery a few days later when the perpetrator returned.
To Suarez's surprise, a Wednesday morning alert from the system revealed that the phantom Grinch snatcher was back and, rather that being a troublesome teenager, a bear was responsible for the holiday hijinks. "I thought it was the funniest thing ever," she recalled, laughing that she and her husband sent it "to all of our family and friends at five in the morning." While Suarez had a sense of humor about the situation, the Grinch's second run-in with the bear turned out to be no laughing matter as far as the decoration was concerned as the creature's claws shredded the inflatable that ultimately wound up in the trash.