When you think car thief -- a black bear usually isn’t the first image that comes to mind…                

But Boston’s WHDH reports -- when one California family left their Prius outside a Lake Tahoe cabin… they became carjacking victims of a VERY unexpected perp.

“A bear, yes a bear, broke into their car and then, went on a bit of a joyride.”

Seattle’s KCPQ reports, the McCarthys woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of their car’s honking horn…

And the culprit behind the noisy nuisance…a black bear… trapped inside, struggling to get out.

“It was really rocking, the car was rocking, kind of grunting, a lot of hrrr hrrr hrrr, yea, and you could see him moving around, thrashing around, because he wanted to get out.”

And he eventually did… LA’s KABC reports after watching the bear struggle for thirty minutes, the family peeked back out the window and noticed their car was gone…That’s when they called 9-1-1.

“In the chaos of him thrashing around inside the car he pulled back the gear shift, which is a pretty hard task to do.  By the time he got that car in gear, he was just getting desperate.  He did steal our car, but he left it across the street, it wasn’t hard to find.”

Cleveland’s WOIO reports the bear pulled the gearshift into reverse, backing down the McCarthys' driveway and over several boulders… eventually crashing into their neighbor’s front porch.              

“These boulders were huge, so for him to be flying over these boulders it’s like, whoa.”

But by the time the police arrived, the bear was M-I-A.

And as for the damage, well, let’s just say for a bear in an eco-FRIENDLY car… the bear wasn’t too friendly in return…

Pittsburgh’s WTAE reports on the prius’s pitiful state…

“It’s just wreckage, that’s all it is, it is just the metal shell of what once was our car.”

Officers filed the police report as… get this…burglary…by a bear… wonder how they filed that insurance claim.