BearSaver, an Ontario, Calif. manufacturer of bear-proof waste cans, recently pitted Kobuck against its residential waste receptacle. Again and again and again.

“They kept bringing this thing back and bringing it back and bringing it back and it kept failing,” Libby Scott, animal curator at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center told the L.A. Times. “So it would go back for improvement and retesting” until they finally got it right.

In the end, the company produced a battle-tested, rollout curbside trash can that looks much like any other, except for its steel reinforcement and patented self-locking lid.

For 90 minutes, Kobuck clawed, chewed, pounced and crushed the can, trying to extract fish inside. Exhausted, the bruin gave up, and the product passed the test. Now, the city of Monrovia, Calif. says BearSaver trash cans are ready to take on suburban black bears in Los Angeles County.

Monrovia, a foothill town, is a bear magnet. Homes press deep into canyons, particularly along Norumbega Drive, where bears find more food in pet dishes, orchards and trash cans than they do in the San Gabriel Mountains. Reports of bears in yards, pools and hot tubs are common.

“We have our fair share of bear problems,” said Jason Varner of the city’s Public Works Department. “The past couple weeks we’ve had one or two calls from residents saying bears are trying to get into the trash cans.”

Bears that get too cozy around people can become destructive nuisances or safety threats. Such encounters, if left unchecked, almost invariably lead to the destruction of the animal, wildlife officials say.

To prevent that, the Monrovia City Council last month indicated its willingness to proceed with widespread use of bear-proof trash cans in the most-affected neighborhoods. While no final decision has been made, city staff members are studying how to pay for and deploy the new waste bins under a pilot program.

About 3,000 of the “bear-resistant residential carts” are already in use in Wrightwood, located on the north side of the range. Others are securely keeping garbage from the maws of bears in Alaska and Montana, said Steve Thompson, spokesman for BearSaver. He said Monrovia would be the first urban area to deploy the receptacles.

While the steel-reinforced hull of the can prevents bears from squashing it, Thompson said the self-locking lid is the key. Once the lid is firmly closed, only a human finger can reach in and depress the release switch.

But the can costs about $150, twice as much as a regular plastic roll-out bin. Monrovia officials, working with waste haulers, are trying to determine who will pay the extra cost.