Neighborhood Bear

I knew that it was only a matter of time. Our neighbor Gloria called Sunday morning at 7am. She had been out for an early morning walk and spotted them....footprints. Another neighbor, Margaret saw them too. Margaret was wondering why someone was out walking in the mud in their bare feet. Gloria had it right. Gloria called to ask me to see if they possibly were bear tracks.

I knew without even looking that she was probably right. There are bears 80 miles to the east in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are bears even closer in the Big South Fork National Recreation Area, 50 miles to the north. It was only a matter of time before one or more found their way to our area. The Catoosa Wildlife Management area is within 2 miles to the east and the north and it consists of 80,000 acres of nearly pure wilderness. If bears could re-populate the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park from Mexico, 50 miles across the desert, then 50 miles across sparsely populated mountains and trees should be a cake walk.

Nancy and I headed about a block away to where Gloria saw the muddy tracks crossing our street. There was no question, they were bear tracks. Conditions were exactly right for the bear to leave very clear tracks. It had rained hard for about an hour the evening before and several new homes had just had topsoil spread a few days before. The bear left deep tracks in the muddy yards and muddy prints every time it crossed the street. We tracked it the whole length of the street, about 1/2 mile in total. We could clearly see where it came out of the woods out by the main road and then wandered through almost every yard, crossing the street 5 or 6 times and then headed back down the main road away from the homes.

Surprisingly it didn't seem to get into any bird feeders but it did turn over one barbecue grill. It went up on at least two front porches, right to the front door and on at least two back decks.

There was only one set of tracks so it was alone. Based on the size of the tracks and according to one of my animal track books, it was a large bear. The front prints measured about 5 inches by 5 inches.
It is going to be a hard year for bears because of the late and severe frost that killed all the cultivated blueberries and many of the apples and peaches and also damaged some of the wild berries and much of the mast crop (acorns). Bears are expected to be roaming far and wide to find food this year. The good news is that the wild blackberry crop appears to be pretty good so far (we have had one pie already). I was over in east Tennessee the last two days and the blackberries are not ripe there yet, but they started to ripen about a week ago around here.

Hopefully most people will not put their garbage out to the street until the morning of trash pickup and they will keep pet food and birdseed out of reach. If the humans can keep their food and trash away from the bears, then the bears should not be a problem. The old saying "a fed bear is a dead bear" means that bears that learn to get food from humans often become troublesome and have to be relocated, dead or alive.

Here's wishing Mr. or Mrs. Bear lots of non-human food and a long life.