black bears

15 09, 2014

An Unexpected (and Uninvited) Summer Visitor

By |2021-09-22T05:50:25-05:00September 15th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

This summer has been a revolving door of visitors at our house and we’ve loved it!

We’ve seen folks we haven’t seen in thirty years and caught up. Plus we’ve gotten to spend time with family. 

There has been, however, a surprise and frequent visitor recently. 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s that time of year in the forest. Black bears, who are actually brown or cinnamon-colored, are feeding up for the long winter hibernation.  

A bear’s natural wariness to find food overrides his fear of humans and his nose is one hundred times more sensitive than ours.

Bird and hummingbird feeders provide as much as twelve hundred calories so the bears prowl around looking for easy food.  We do our part to keep the bears wild by bearproofing our house, which means we take our bird feeders in at night.  

Only, our visitor came mid-morning! 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOn his first visit, Buddy Bear, as my sister named him, emptied our homemade feeder, and ignored the hummingbird feeder hanging ten feet above his head according to the bearproofing pamphlet instructions. It was too high for him to reach. 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFinished, Buddy sat a spell before he moseyed off. 

bear away2Buddy returned for a second sniff and, finding none, wandered off again.bear away

Next day he came again. This time sniffing no food, he sauntered up to the rock outcropping above our house. We watched him from the large dining room window.  He watched us. We wondered if he thought we were in a people zoo.

Eventually he traveled on. But Buddy returned a third day.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFinding the feeder gone. He decided to take a rest up next to the house.

bear firecrackerThat was when my husband decided that Buddy was becoming too friendly and used one of our forest ranger provided firecrackers.

The loud bang sent Buddy scurrying away.

A fourth time, he ambled by, pausing mid-way up the hill and looking down, but kept going as if remembering the firecracker. (Bears are very smart and have great memories.) 

We’re hoping that the firecracker did its job. If you look closely, you’ll noticed that Buddy has tags on both his ears.

He’d been a very bad boy. A bear is tagged and relocated from an area where he’s done some damage or been a threat to humans.

Bears only get two chances. Third time the animal is destroyed.  

We don’t want that to happen. They lived in this place first and we’re willing to share unless the visitor is very, very bad.

Btw, we never use firecrackers on our human house guests — even if they are very, very bad.

12 08, 2013

Black Bear Visits

By |2013-08-12T06:25:45-05:00August 12th, 2013|Living in a Forest|3 Comments

The exciting part of living in the Rio Grande Forest is observing the wildlife. During our four years here, we have seen:

Mountain Goats. Mule Deer. Elk. Moose. Beavers. Fox. Squirrels. Chipmunks. Hummingbirds. Woodpeckers. Thirty different species of birds.

We’re also heard a mountain lion. Haven’t seen one…yet. They seem to stay over the ridge away from our house.

Not the Black Bears.

Our first year here a Black Bear came to drink from the container the previous owners set out for the wildlife. Needless to say, we discarded the container immediately.

We didn’t see another bear that year, but we read up on living with bears and the next year we followed all the suggestions about securing our trash, taking in the birdfeeders at night, and bear proofing our home.

That year a bear came by in the middle day to help himself to our birdfeeders, which were out during the day. OO

When Mr. Bear 2012 refused to leave, we did what we were supposed to do and contacted the CPW office. A wildlife ranger came out. During his visit, Mr. Bear returned and demonstrated how he had not read the pamphlet that loud noises would chase him away.

The ranger left firecrackers behind for us to use and advised us to contact the office if that particular bear returned.firecrackers2

Mr. Black Bear 2012 didn’t come back.

This year we’ve had three encounters and it’s only August.

The first time we accidentally left the hummingbird feeders out overnight. Mr. Bear 2013 tore the feeder from the tree and dropped it – empty–when he left.

We never saw him only the evidence he’d visited.

Remember, bears have excellent memories and he’d found a food source at our house. Mr. Bear 2013 returned.

Unfortunately, the next time he came, we’d left the shed door open while we worked in the yard. Our neighbor called to tell us to be careful because a bear was in our shed.

When we came through the house to see for ourselves, Mr. Bear 2013 was sitting on the deck helping himself to the forty-pound tub of sunflower seeds we had stored for the birdfeeders.

We made loud noises per the instructions for bear encounters and Mr. Bear 2013 carried the tub up the mountain behind our house, stopping to eat from the tub.???????????????????????????????

We fired a firecracker from our stash that we store on the kitchen table.

Mr. Bear disappeared over the ridge only to return forty minutes later to finish out the tub he thought he’d left behind.

We fired another firecracker. He scampered over the ridge in a different direction this time.

Relieved that Mr. Bear 2013 had read the pamphlet and was duly frightened off by loud noises, we elected not to notify the CPW regional office.

If you look in the picture you’ll see Mr. Bear 2013 has a blue tag on his ear. The tag means he’d already been tagged once, and Colorado has a “two strike” rule for dealing with problem bears.

The first time a bear gets into trouble, it receives an ear tag marking it as a problem bear. Another serious encounter, or “second strike,” means the bear will be killed.

We didn’t want that.

HOWEVER, we knew we needed to be extra careful because bears will return to the same locations where they have been successful finding food in the past.

For two weeks, we didn’t see Mr. Bear 2013. Then last Friday we woke up to find this:??????????????????????Mr. Bear 2013 had pawed and scratched the shed door until the latch on top came undone. We’re pretty sure our visitor was Mr. Bear 2013 because he’d already been in the shed once. He remembered the sunflower seeds and returned.

Then he carried the grey tub out of the shed and up the hill.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????This time Mr. Bear 2013 was too smart for his own good. He’d figured out how to get into a locked and secure shed.

Jerry climbed up the hill and retrieved what was left of the new forty-pound bag of sunflower seeds. ???????????????????????????????

???????????????????????????????Even though the only thing Mr. Bear 2013 took from the shed was the tub he remembered when he could have had the tub of deer corn tub underneath or mixed birdseed in the white container, we’re contacting CWP when their offices open on Monday.

I believe in preserving Colorado’s wildlife, but smarty Mr. Bear 2013 might decide to come back for the tubs he left in the shed or into the kitchen for human food next time.

Can’t have that!

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