8. But the idea of hunting this majestic animal doesn't sit right with many Romanians, who point out that the problem is man-made: a result of real estate developments encroaching on the bear's habitat, which caused the bear to enter human communities, where it acquired a taste for human food:

7. The people who live in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the counties most affected want a hunting moratorium to be lifted.

6. The brown bear - which can reach up to 900 pounds and can stand as tall as a doorway - have been sighted in 27 of Romania's 41 counties. I visited five people who have been disfigured by bears, in one instance speaking to the victim's daughter because the man remains intubated

4. On a third occasion, a bear penetrated the spa, and downed a 3-liter jug of massage oil. The majestic creature has been a tourist draw for decades in Romania, but this is not Winnie the Pooh. The numbers of attacks on people are through the roof:

3. The bear headed to the breakfast buffet where it ate all the sachets of honey. On another occasion, it entered a hallway spooking this housekeeper:

2. The brown bear - or ursus arctos - is one of the national treasures of my birth country. But in recent years, the man vs nature equation has flipped. I visited one hotel where bears came *inside* the establishment not once, not twice, but three times just in the month of June.

1. At 4:22 am on June 20, the intruder approached the entrance to the four-star resort. The break-in took 23 seconds. The suspect weighed 400 pounds. The target of the burglary? Honey. A thread on how Romania's bear population has exploded:

9. The housing problem is only being kicked down the road: Many of the homeless told us that they are heading to a different patch of federal land on the north side of Bend. Not because they want to, but because they have nowhere else to go:

8. Some have histories of incarceration. Others of drug and substance abuse. Mental health disorders are common among the campers, say those who are trying to help them.

7. The dozen people we interviewed inside the forest described the life blows that had led them there: One man had a stroke and couldn't work. Another had a heart attack. One woman suffers from debilitating anxiety after an attack by an ex-boyfriend - we found the restraining order she filed:

6. In the dark, with help from an aid group that spent thousands of dollars to replace dead batteries, busted tires, broken transmissions and faulty wiring, one by one dusty and barely functional RVs and campers lumbered out.

5. Overnight as the deadline to 12:01 am ticked down, homeless people were working frantically to fix derelict RVs and cars, worried that if they didn't get them out in time, their property would be seized.

4. Bend, a former timber town that fell on hard times before reinventing itself as a destination for outdoor sports, has a problem that has become all too common: There are some 500 shelter beds, which are perpetually full. Just in the forest, advocates say there are at least 100 homeless people.

3. The leaflet warned the more than 100 homeless people living here to get out today, or else face a $5,000 fine, a Class B misdemeanor and up to one year in jail. But where could these people go? Many have lived in this forest for years in RVs and campers that no longer run:

2. For weeks, squad cars from the U.S. Federal Service have been crisscrossing barren land off of a logging road in the Deschutes National Forest just outside of Bend in Oregon posting a stark warning on the doors and windows of beat-up RVs:

4. From there, their paths diverged - sharply. The Spaldings were cut a check for their entire contents policy seven weeks after the fire, after nothing more than a phone interview with their adjuster.

3. The Ackermans and the Spaldings each bought their home for nearly the same price 15 years ago. Their houses were both four bedrooms. They both evacuated on December 30, 2021 as the Marshall Fire engulfed their neighborhood. This is the scene they came back to, as captured by The Denver Post:

2. Over 16,000 homes burned in Los Angeles and thousands of claims have already been filed. For this story, I headed not to L.A., but to a town near Denver to profile two neighbors who lost homes in the same fire, who had roughly the same coverage - and who had wildly different outcomes: