Bear Aware!

I guess I’ve always had an affinity for bears.  I went to Baylor University where their mascot was a bear, and my dorm-mate Brad was one of the bear caretakers so we were fortunate to house one of the bear cubs (named, “Judge”) and watch him as he chewed and destroyed everything in the apartment.  When Judge grew up, I watched as he lumbered over to a horse trough that was brim-full of water.  He reached back and slapped the side of the tub and my jaw dropped as I watched the tub slide 5 or 6 yards across the concrete floor!  From that moment on, I knew I’d never forget just how strong a mature bear was!

Bear Facts (as I have observed them here in Perry Park):

• They seem to me to be mostly nocturnal.  To spot one in the daylight is fairly rare.
• They're smart!  If they're lucky enough ONE TIME to find some goodies in the box that your milk-man uses, they will come back to check the box for weeks.
• They will spend an entire day, sleeping 30 feet above the ground, in the top of a pine tree.
• They're easily startled!  Yell at them, and they run away!
• They're sneaky!  You wouldn't think that a 500lb animal could move through the woods as quietly as they do, but you'd be surprised.
• They STINK!
• They sort through your garbage.  No kidding!  I've cleaned up a lot of garbage from a lot of bears, and every time I'm surprised to see that they sort things into various piles.  They'll put all the beer bottles in one pile, greasy things in another, aluminum foil gets piled up over in one place, etc.  I find this fascinating!
• They will sit and hold an apple in their paws and eat it, just as cute as can be... but they'll also slaughter a fawn and eat it in front of it's mother so do not, for a moment, think that they are cuddly, harmless vegetarians!

Oh... so sneaky!

Fast forward almost exactly 30 years.  Now living in Perry Park, I was excited to see my first bear through the office window of my home.  I grabbed my camera and ran out of the house, dodging the scrub oak, angling toward the corner of the yard where I hoped I’d intercept him on his trek!  The whole time, a nagging little voice in my head was whispering, “You’re running TOWARD a bear, armed with nothing more than a camera and your slippers!”  I didn’t care, this was my first “real live bear in the wild” and I was determined to get a picture of him.  At first, all I could see was the ridge of his back, cresting the surrounding scrub oak and moving noisily in my general direction.  I aimed the camera, slammed the shutter button down, and watched as the black hump lumbered forward and my camera whirred and clickclickclicked along.  He turned uphill and I could tell that he was going to miss his close-up so; I yelled at him.  “HEY DUMB BEAR,” I hollered, “HEY!”  To my complete surprise, he stopped, turned, stood up on his hind legs, looked right at me, and licked his lips!

He thinks I look delicious

So many things happened at that moment.  First, I noticed just how bad a wild bear smells.  Second, that little voice in my head scored a resounding victory!  I heard myself whisper, “You can smell him.  He’s close.  Remember how strong and fast he is?  He’s licking his lips!  Get the hell out of here!”  So, camera clicking, I walked backwards as quickly as I safely could before slowly turning and eventually parking my fanny back in the house in a hurry.

Hanging out with the family

I’ve seen many bears around the house since that day.  There’s a Mamma bear with two cubs who makes a habit of spending entire days 30 feet high in the trees!  Our neighbors and I spent hours watching her once, making a social event out of the occasion!  Neighbor Tina sent me a text saying, “Mamma bear and two cubs in the tree by our house, come see!”  Thirty minutes later, we had lawn chairs, beverages, and binoculars out as we watched the Bruin and Brood laze the day away in the top of one of the tallest Ponderosa Pines on the block!  They slept, scratched, pooped, and basically hung out up there until it got dark.  Since that day, I’ve kept an eye higher up toward the tops of the trees and I’ve had the pleasure of spotting her in other trees on other days.

I’m perfectly content to live with the bears.  Lisa and I have casually given them names so we can tell them apart.  Skunky, Big-boy, Momma-Bear, and Little Guy are well known in our corner of the Park and they hang out here often.  In fact, it’s fair to say that leave more poop in my front yard, by weight, than all of the Mule Deer, dogs, and other critters combined!

Another Casualty

My only wish, is that they leave my garbage alone!  Bears love garbage, I get it.  It’s easy pickens for them, and a free meal is a free meal.  The “solutions” that various people offer up from around the neighborhood are quite entertaining.  “Strap on a bungee cord,” I’ve heard people say.  I don’t have a lot of confidence in a rubber band, vs an animal that can bench press 1,000lbs!  “Ammonia” is a solution that seems to work for some, but it didn’t work for me!   Others have scolded me for putting my trash out too far ahead of when the trash truck comes.  Well, I put it out on our actual pick-up day, but I leave for work at 5:30am when it’s still dark.  The bears grab it before the truck gets here in the afternoon, so…

I had this idea that if everyone in Perry Park were to use a bear-proof toter, the bears might get the hint and go somewhere else on trash day.  I spoke with our trash folks and they were willing to make an effort to provide bear-proof dumpsters to everyone, but they wanted to try them out first.  That seemed reasonable to me, so I volunteered to be their test guy!  What followed was a series of hilarious bouts of “Bears vs. Dumpsters” at my house all Summer and Fall, and the bears were winning!  Things got interesting, various manufacturers flew to Colorado and drove out to my house to see, first hand, what Perry Park bears were able to accomplish, that their own test bears could not!

Teeth and Claw Marks on the Dumpster

I've had dumpsters chewed open, popped open, and dragged down the street.  One bear found a week spot on one of the dumpsters and learned how to open it at will.  He would pop the lid and snack on the garbage right there in my driveway!  My friends would add to the mayhem by dressing up in bear suits and dancing around in my driveway, on camera, just to “pile on” to an already ridiculous situation!  In the end, we did seem to find one toter that had great success against the bears, and we’ll make some decisions next Spring, when the bears come out of hibernation.

For your own amusement, I'm including several videos here that help chronicle my battles with the bears and my garbage!

Here, we see Skunky the bear doing a "drive-by" to check the Milk box!

Here's a couple of videos of BigBoy stealing my garbage.  At one point, I was able to sit in my garage and to watch through the window as he ransacked my trash!

Finally, I had some success with a dumpster that BigBoy tried to steal.  He knocked it over and kicked it around for awhile, before dragging it down the driveway, up the street, and into the woods at the corner of my yard before I finally found it!

Mighty Elvis

I can't think of a better way to introduce the Perry Park Wildlife blog to you, than to introduce you to Elvis.  Elvis is a very unique Mule Deer.  So named because he refuses to scrape the velvet from his antlers every year, our own "Velvet Elvis" stands apart from his fellow bucks.

Elvis Attributes:

• Make no mistake, Elvis is a wild animal!  We don't live on a deer farm or anything, like all of the other animals here, he found us
• Keeps the velvet on this antlers until they fall off in the Spring
• Will not fight or engage other bucks in any battles for females
• HUGE body, stubby legs
• He has what experts call, "Non-Typical" antlers that have an enormous base, and tines that sprout in crazy directions
• He seems to know me, and he follows me home on most Winter days!

In this picture (click it, for the full sized image),  you can see his crazy antlers!  You can also see that he's been busy... somehow, he's managed to snap off the tips of some of his antler tines.  It doesn't seem to bother him, though.

Elvis is NOT shy!  He knows immediately when I'm outside and he walks (sometimes he runs) right over so I can scratch his chin.  He can be a little creepy sometimes, staring at us through the window when he knows we're home!

His favorite trick is to follow me home when he sees my truck in the neighborhood.  Most of the time, I see him running alongside, but sometimes I miss him and I don't see him until he startles me at home when I get out of the truck!  There's nothing like glancing over your left shoulder to see full-grown Buck staring you down!  GAHH!

You can see in the videos below where, depending on where Elvis happens to be, sometimes he beats me home and I have to help move him out of the way so I can park my truck in the garage!

Honestly, I'd lay out a bed for him on cold nights, but once he runs over say "Hello," he's just as quick to rejoin his group in the woods and to say, "Goodbye!"