MEDWAY — With the right bow tie, the adorable brown bear cub in the backyard of Sean Trimbach’s Crystal Lake home could pass for a real-life version of Boo-Boo.

The only problem is that it’s a she, and she already has a name — Daisy.

“I’d love to get in there to wrestle around with her,” Trimbach said Monday as Daisy scurried up the side of her $2,000 cage. “But she is a bear.”

And, like those shreds of generic toilet paper left behind on the Charmin bear’s rump in TV commercials, that’s Nancy Brown’s sticking point.

Acting on a neighbor’s recent complaint, Brown, a Bethel Twp. trustee, wants Trimbach to get rid of his bear.

“There are other houses around,” Brown said. “No one should have to live across the street from a bear.”

The sight of cars slowing down on nearby Schiller Road to get a glimpse of the bear — a 7-month-old Syrian brown bear that eventually will weigh 500 pounds — has become a familiar one.

But it’s perfectly legal in Ohio for Trimbach, an exotic-animal breeder for more than 20 years, to keep the bear on his property in the 2200 block of Lake Road. He and his wife, Bonnie, operate Best Exotics LLC, a USDA-licensed “alternative livestock farm.”

The Trimbachs’ farm is full of bizarre-looking chickens, giant rabbits, foxes and pheasants. They’ve even had lemurs before.

And don’t forget about the reptiles inside the house — venomous and nonvenomous alike.

“Some people have goats,” Trimbach said. “We just took it a step further.”

But Brown wants the state law changed.

“How am I supposed to tell the neighbors across the street with small children that, yes, we can regulate cows and goats, but we can’t regulate bears?” she asked.

In April, Gov. John Kasich let expire Ted Strickland’s last-minute executive order banning the private possession, sale and transfer of exotic animals.

Strickland’s order killed Trimbach’s business for three months, he said.

His customers include everyone from zoos to private owners.

Exotic-animal breeders have been given a bad name in recent years, according to Trimbach.

Even the Kasich administration is at work to come up with policies to regulate the ownership of creatures deemed “dangerous wild animals.”

“The only ones you hear about,” Trimbach said, “are the ones who aren’t doing it properly.”

Byron Rice, the Clark County wildlife officer for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, has been fielding a couple of calls a month about the bear since July.

“It’s visible right there from Schiller (Road),” Rice said. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Hey, that’s a little grizzly bear.’

“I went all the way to Alaska and never saw one. Here I find one in Clark County.”

Rice visited the property to make sure Daisy wasn’t a black bear, which is a native species to Ohio and would have required a permit from the ODNR.

“They have everything in order,” he said.

Native to the Middle East, but quite possibly extinct in the wild, Syrian brown bears are the smallest of brown bears — the ferocious subspecies that includes the grizzly bear and Alaska’s 1,000-pound Kodiak bear.

Daisy came from a South Carolina breeder in May, Trimbach said.

He has plans to breed her, and has plans to build a larger enclosure as well.

“It’s legal to have anything you want,” Rice said. “There are people who have lions and tigers and wolves, and it leaves you scratching your head. Nothing says you can’t.”

The bear, Trimbach said, isn’t actually the most dangerous mammal he’s owned.

He argues that the Watusi bull, an African species with humongous horns, was a lot more volatile.

Not everyone in the neighborhood is all that concerned about the bear next door.

“You’ve got to admit, he’s got high enough fences,” said Tom Piechowiak, an Air Force retiree who lives across the street.

Piechowiak didn’t actually know about the bear, but said his great-grandkids have visited the Trimbach property in the past.

“He’s a super nice guy,” Piechowiak said. “They’ve got a whole menagerie.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or email him at amcginn@coxohio.com.