Get that bear out of my fridge!

It's a real bear-faced cheek - letting yourself into someone else's kitchen, checking out the fridge, then helping yourself to some grub.

But when you weigh 440lbs and have the ability to kill a person with one swipe of your massive paw, nobody's really going to argue.

This two-year-old polar bear, pictured raiding a kitchen in the far northern Canadian town of Churchill, is a common sight for people living there. Every year the polar bears invade the town on their annual journey through the Arctic tundra.

The bears, which can leap up to 6ft and run at 40mph, raid people's homes in search of food to last them through hibernation.

These days, the towns-folk have developed a way of coping.

They have set up bear traps, and any bear caught is sent to "polar prison" before being released back into the wild.

Yet, as these pictures prove, the system isn't foolproof just yet...

Caught red-handed, this polar bear will be one of the stars of a new movie by French director Claude Lelouch about a woman who videos bears.

While filming the bear's antics, the crew stayed safe by locking themselves in a huge cage.

Fortunately the bear didn't see them.

Otherwise his next meal could have been a TV dinner out of a can...

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