For the second time in less than a week, the presence of bears has prompted a lockout at Flatirons Elementary in Boulder, Colorado. According to a post made by the Boulder Valley School District on Twitter, the school went on lockout at around 10:15 AM on Friday. A lockout means that no one can come or go from the school.

While the bears didn’t enter the building as one did in a recent Estes Park incident, a mother and her cubs were spotted in a nearby tree. A potential safety concern, the school chose to err on the side of caution. I guess that’s a side effect of living in a town that’s so close to nature.

As human civilization continues to spread deeper into the foothills around Colorado, interactions with wildlife seem to be on the rise. If you live in an area where wildlife sightings are common, make sure you take precautions like using bear-proof trash cans to prevent interactions as much as possible. Unfortunately, many interactions result in euthanization of a potentially dangerous animal.