How did they get your car keys?
I thought some would say “Don’t pick up hairy hitchhikers”. Anyway, new car doors with the just pull on the handle are VERY easy for bears to open. They only need to swipe their paws around. And it is recommended not to lock your car cause they will just rip the handle off. I donno. They could do a hell of a lot more damage in the car, but at this point have only left muddy foot prints.
The Uber joke occurred to me after the edit window.
Unfortunately, there aren’t really a lot of other good options. The expression “A fed bear is a dead bear” is meaningful because once bears lose their natural fear of humans then violent conflicts become inevitable. For better or worse, once those conflicts involve human injury or death, public pressure is going to require that bear be destroyed.
Is that the moral or ethical response? I can’t really say but it’s the reality. In an extremely isolated locale perhaps it’s possible to simply exclude humans from the area, but around human activity there really aren’t any better options. No one in these situations is blaming the bear or calling it evil. It’s just that we place a higher value on human lives than ursine ones.
Back in the '80s I had a t-shirt with a picture of a bear holding a Thompson: “Support your right to keep and arm bears.”
I’ve been dodging a bear for about 2 years. We know he lives here we just can’t find him. And the guys have tried.
Game wardens have tried.
I don’t want the bear to die at all. Just relocation would suit me. The G and F people are worthless, hapless and I suspect caring about my safety is above their pay grade.
So I walk the dogs cautiously, carry a long gun everywhere. Watch the littles when they’re out of doors.
I guess when he eats me they’ll get serious. I just hope it’s me it eats not a child or pet.
Has anyone thought to put out a Pic-a-Nick? He may be smarter than the aaaverage bear.
Hey, boo boo
To add to this, it’s my understanding the way humans domesticated dogs was to kill the dogs that were aggressive toward or bit any human. Only the ones that behaved the way we wanted lived to breed and pass on the traits we desired, while undesirable traits were suppressed. Perhaps eliminating wildlife that shows an interest in humans as a source of food may achieve similar results (altho in this case, unintended).
well this closes out the sad affair
That would be a WrekdaBeck.
For someone ranting about bear welfare, you seem to know little about their behavior.
Black Bears do not generally engage/attack to defend their cubs. They evolved in the company of larger predators, and their instincitve strategy is to run away from any perceived danger. This includes a momma with cubs - the cubs will run up a tree while the mother runs away.
The very rare occasions when a Black Bear overcomes the instinct to run away and attacks a human it’s usually predation (the other common situation is where a dog has started a fight with a Black Bear and the human gets caught up in it). If a Black Bear has attacked and eaten a human, it wasn’t motivated by defense of its cubs. It’s a dangerous situation where it is likely short of other food and has discovered that humans are quite easy to kill, and it’s likely to continue to prey on humans.
This is why the usual advice is to fight back in the unlikely event that a Black Bear attacks.
Humans have been killing animals that attacked people since the dawn of humanity. This is not some new policy intended to domesticate them.
I’ve seen our rather small black bear 3 times. Everytime he was just as shocked as me.
I’ve 90acres and nearly 400 acres of uninhabited state land next door.
He’s been as close to us as our big pond. Which is probably why he’s here, for the fish.
I feel like there’s room for us and the bear.
We have a special permit to kill him. I don’t want to do that.
I don’t want him near my house though. So we take precautions and keep a sharp look out.
To tell you the truth I’m more afraid of wasps and snakes.
It’s true that mock attacks on humans by black bear females defending cubs are far more common than real ones.
On the other hand, the vast majority of predatory black bear attacks on humans are by males.
The assumption that every attack on a human by a wild animal is due to “rogue” behavior, optimally solved by killing the animal is largely a matter of human convenience and not biology.
And it is possible to tranquilize and transport a black bear and cub to a safer location. This happened with the mama bear I came face to face with in the Tetons a few years ago (its presence in a hiking area led authorities to believe she and her cub would be better off in a sanctuary).
That bear evidently had little fear of humans based on my experience and other reports I heard. Dang rangers should’ve shot her and her cub, less trouble that way.
The greatest lesson I ever learned about respecting wildlife was when I was 10 years old watching a black bear demolish a latched, metal Coleman cooler to get at a pack of hotdogs. I was ten feet away in the back of a VW camper van made of metal about half the thickness of the cooler.
Continuing the hijack, but… Fun fact: South Florida is the only place in the world with both crocodiles and alligators. At least that was what a park ranger at the Everglades told me.
The male/female predation statistics (and your anecdote) are irrelevant when they ignore the known data in this incident. We KNOW that in this case the bear killed and ate the victim. It is absolutely reckless to do anything other than euthanize a Black Bear that has killed and eaten a human. Bears are highly intelligent, and once a hungry bear has discovered an easy food source it will repeat the behavior.
Also, at least one of the cubs had human remains in its stomach, so its death was necessary to prevent it from killing and eating any more humans.
And the third one was a picky eater and probably would have starved to death, anyway.