My wife Cheryl and I have lived in the Wye Mountain area for about 10 years. Our property is surrounded on two sides by timber company land, and in general this area of the county is fairly wooded, not cleared. We’ve seen bears two other times. The first year we were here we saw one at a neighbor’s. It was raiding their chicken coop, not for the chickens but for their food- a large plastic container of corn. A few years later we saw an assumed mom bear with three, yes three, cubs crossing the road on Highway 113 near the road we turn on to go to our house. There was a forest fire west of us that day, and I’m sure that’s what had resulted in this sighting. Everyone (the world’s most frequently quoted source) I’ve talked to since says that three cubs in extremely unusual, and probably only two were that bears, that she’d picked up one from another bear that had something happen to it.
We’d not seen one since until this last Friday, August the 15th. I got home from work about 5:30 and my wife said we’d just had a bear in the back yard about 30 minutes earlier. My immediate “Oh yeah sure, was it riding a unicycle and tooting a trumpet?” was met with a stern “I mean IT!” The back door was open, just the screen door was closed, and one of the cats was slinking toward the door with her hair all puffed upped (it was a long haired calico cat who is accurately named Bad Bella for her famous bite reflex, and she REALLY puffs up when scared) so I went to see what she was looking at and there was this HUGE bear standing on its hind legs raiding our bird feeder”. Ok Ok I say, sorry I missed it. She said it ran off when it heard her shut the door. I suspect that door was not just shut, but super slammed.
About 45 minutes later I was in kitchen when she calls out “It’s back the bear is back.” Don’t tease me I say and she says get in here NOW before it goes back into the woods and you think I’m hallucinating. So I hurried into the living room and yes dear I never doubted you, ’cause that is a big, big, bear!’ It was walking under our bird feeders, which are a little higher than my head and I’m about 6 feet tall, and then smooth and easy it raised up to stand only on it’s back legs, put two large bear paws around our main bird feeder that I’d just refilled a few days before with “Deluxe Mix”, and tilted the feeder sideways. It put it’s mouth to one of the feeding ports and shook bird feed into its mouth. It would then lower back to all fours to finish it’s bite then rear up to do it again. It was very cautious, looking around and occasionally walking about 10 feet back into the cover of woods and then return to continue it’s feeding. I finally eased the back sliding glass door open to try to get a picture and it immediately ran into the woods.
That was it until well after dark when I thought i heard something and shined a light out and of course, the bear was back to continue to raid the feeder. It is actually an electric “Wild Bill’s” feeder and I thought perhaps he would finally touch it in a way that would shock him, but it did not, or he was not bothered if it did. A shock designed to deter squirrels and raccoons may not have much effect on a bear. Or perhaps his initial swatting at the feeder may had jarred the battery loose.
Anyway, I would occasionally shine a light on him or even turn the back flood light on, which would cause him to go into the woods , but he would soon be back. This game persisted until about 11 pm at which time I decided to go to bed, resigned to have a mangled feeder in the morning. Next morning the feeder was completely empty and greatly misshapen, but somewhat to my surprise it was still hanging.
I got a call about mid morning from Wade Walker with Ark Game and Fish. We’d called and left a message with them the night before. Wade traps and relocates bears. He’s had one other sighting in this general area that might have been the same bear. He explained that late in the summer some animals will expand their range looking for food if their normal sources are low.
He gave me the good and common sense advice of putting up any outside food for a while- bird, dog, cat and making sure any garbage was secure. He said that without food source a bear will usually move on. I told him that it was obvious that this bear was still afraid of people. He said it was important to keep it that way, for people to make a loud noise and scare a potential nuisance bear off, and NOT to feed them. He was super nice, gave me his cell phone # and said call him if we continued to have trouble and he could come a set up a trap.
This is Sunday pm and I’ve not seen the bear since Saturday morning. Hopefully he is back in the woods where he should live and people should visit. And not the other way around. And while I enjoyed his visit, I must admit I would not like having to hide my outside animal food and be fixing bird feeders on a regular basis. My poor cardinals and hummingbirds did some frustrated flying back and forth across where the feeders should hang, and hopefully will again soon.
My impression of this bear was one of a gentle easy going creature, a little curious and hungry, but cautious, one who was a happy and relaxed. And if bears and people keep a decent distance between them, I think we will be happy, and relaxed too. And obviously delighted and enlightened, just as bears have been dong for people for as long as they’ve both been here.
By Owen Floyd
Pictures by Owen Floyd
