I went to my office to pick up some paperwork, sashayed out to the parking lot, and there was a BEAR hanging out by my car. The campus is surrounded by heavy woods and deer/sundry fauna are a common sight.
It took a moment for me to process that - holy shit -
THAT’S A BEAR! I backed up slowly to a building entrance and watched him/her snuffle around for a minute or so then head back into the woods. I waited a bit then sprinted to the car and squealed off (hey, I saw “The Revenant” twice!)
It was an amazing sight, I’ve never seen a bear in the wild though there are a lot of black bears in the NJ/PA area.
It’s not a bear but I few years ago I left work and a buck and two does surrounded my car. The buck was taller than me and I am not used to animals that are larger than I am. I was sure when I approached they would scatter. They didn’t. I was sure when I got into my car and slammed the door they would scatter. They didn’t. Surely when I started it. Nope. Not even when I started (cautiously) driving. They were there until I left but were gone the next day.
What time of year? If it’s during the rut (mating season) they’ve got their minds (such as they are) on other things. And outside of hunting season they don’t seem nearly as skittish. In the middle of summer I was riding a bike trail along a local freeway and happened upon a deer on the other side of the fence, about 8 feet away from me. She stared at me for a little bit and then trotted off.
But in the fall when the gunshots start ringing? They book at the merest hint of anything two legged in the vicinity.
Bears sometimes wander into Albuquerque in the fall, especially if food is scarce in the mountains. The police usually tranquilize them and they’re sent to the zoo for a checkup and then released. Once a half starved mountain lion came to town. The cops tried to find it but unfortunately it was run over before they could get to it.
I haven’t seen any of the bears or mountain lions but I see coyotes frequently. In areas where they’re not hunted they come out during the day and I’ve gotten several pictures.
That’s awesome! Probably a young 'un that’s been run off by mama to find his own territory. I hope he’s successful. We see kids like that here every once in awhile and traffic is their biggest threat while they find their own space.
Nope, don’t like seeing bear. I live in their habitat so I am very cautious outside my house. I have had several run-ins with coyotes. And once a bob-cat decided to lounge about on my deck for a morning. I am the outsider out here where I live. I have been here more than 20yrs, but I am still the newbie.
Fortunately I’ve never seen a bear except from a road. Once there was a bear climbing a tree right next to the cabin we were renting in Shenandoah National Park but I only heard it and didn’t see it. Other than that all but one of the times I’ve seen a bear were when there was a “smokey jam” somewhere in the Smoky Mountains where a line of cars had pulled to the side of the road to see a bear.
The other time was when I was driving through the Gila National Forest at night and I saw a “big dog” running down the road and into the scrub. Took me awhile to figure out it was really a black bear since it was faster and smaller and less black than I had imagined black bears (some of which are indeed really black but that one wasn’t).
I was driving through central Texas a couple of days ago and there were a lot of ranches with cattle and horses and occasionally other animals like goats or donkeys. Then I saw something ahead and my first thought was “Wow, those stripes really make that horse look like a zebra.” And then my brain made the connection and I realized that an animal that looks like a horse and has stripes actually is a zebra.
Exciting isn’t it Jennshark. First time I saw one he was in the back of my pickup truck. I had left a bag of trash in the bed.
We see black bear pretty often. They have torn the door to my shed off twice (we keep our trash in there between bi-monthly runs to the trash transfer station).
I’ve had them hang around a bit too long for comfort, and will fire a weapon in there direction. That gets them to scurry off. Though it makes me feel kinda bad.
We see a lot of moose, and frankly, I think they’re more dangerous. They like to hang out and eat the grass and willows, often not more than 25 feet from our deck. That’s pretty cool. They’re quite majestic. VERY big and move in a slow deliberate way that’s hard to describe. They aren’t afraid of anything.
First time I saw a moose at our house, he was licking the road salt off of my car. It was early morning and I didn’t have my glasses on. I alerted my wife “honey, we have a horse in our yard” They are big.
Feh. One time as I was walking in the parking lot at work in Scottsdale – it was about 6am – a coyote bitch sauntered by and just gave me a look of disdain as she did so. We have a lot of concrete-lined drainage channels in the whole metro area and they are coyote highways; they penetrate deeper than most folks figure.
Emphasis added. Reminds me of a time, years back, when I was sitting at a picnic table (no yogi jokes!) in a KOA campground scribbling a postcard to someone. Yeah, people used to send postcards. This was suburbia not some wilderness area, but anyway out of the corner of my eyes, I registered a “dog” walking through the grounds. But something was a bit off about the size of this “dog” way it walked, so I looked up from my postcard, and damn if it wasn’t a bear just moseying his way past me no more than 20 feet away.
Good for you, though, that you got a bit of nature thrown at you unexpectedly and no harm done. I live in the SF Bay area, with 8M other people, but just a half mile or so up in the hills near my house I had an encounter with a mountain lion once. And of course we have coyotes everywhere. And once in awhile, a bear!
It was! I know there are quite a few here (NJ bear hunt recently ended) but this was my first encounter. My brain kind of stopped – hey! Big black doggie! What is a big doggie doing . . . oh! That’s. Not. A. Dog.
The best “wildlife” sighting I can offer up is seeing a mole yesterday…and I didn’t even see the mole itself, just a couple of new mounds of dirt in the lawn.
What’s funny (to me) is that I grew up in rural Intermountain West and I’ve encountered far, far more wildlife in suburban NJ than I did there. We have a resident deer herd and fox family in our field, coyote, groundhogs, squirrels, possums, amazing birds, and interesting snakes galore, cool Delaware River critters and so on . . . and now my bear!
But no Western Diamondback rattlesnakes, which I had my fill of back west, thank you very much.
I live on a property that has many bears roaming around, and I rarely see them except on my game cameras. I would not wish to have an encounter as up close and personal as you did! You did exactly the right thing, though: Back up slowly, avoid eye contact, don’t turn your back and don’t run.
I think there are more sightings in urban areas these days because we have encroached so deeply into their natural habitat. They just don’t have anywhere else to go, and domestic cats and dogs make easy prey.
They are big.
