During an appearance on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, the 'Woman in Gold' actress opens up about spending time in a new house in Lake Tahoe since the coronavirus lockdown began in March.
- July 10, 2020
AceShowbiz - Dame Helen Mirren is feeling proud of herself after scaring a black bear away from her retreat in Nevada.
The Oscar winner and her husband had just moved into a new house in Lake Tahoe when the coronavirus lockdown began in March, and she has found herself really at one with nature in the past four months as all her neighbours moved indoors and visitors stayed away.
"We're not right on the lake but I can see it... It's really pretty...," "The Queen" star said during a recent appearance on Marc Maron's WTF podcast. "Incredible air and just endless entertainment by wildlife - chipmunks, and golden-mantles (squirrel)... and about 10 different kinds of birds."
The 74-year-old found a bear trying to eat the food she had put out for birds on her property and gave it a scolding.
"I saw a bear the other day! A great big black bear came by and stole all my bird food. I went out and I said, 'Bad bear! Bad, naughty bear! Very naughty bear!'."
"He sort of looked at me and lumbered off. He was a big black bear. Funnily enough, I was just reading a book - a little pamphlet - about wildlife up here. They were saying what to do if you encounter a bear - if it's looking aggressively at you and hunching its back and looking like it's about to charge, they said you make yourself look as big as possible, if you can grab a stick, make yourself look big. And then it literally said: 'And then shout: Bad bear! Bad bear!'."
