Living in Bear Country
My wife came back home from an extended trip to Florida Sunday evening. She had been driving all day and was wore out from the drive. She left her truck parked in the front yard and came inside. We figured we would unload it in the morning. About 45 minutes later the dogs started barking with their distinctive bear bark. I can allways tell when it's a bear because the dogs really get worked up.
When I looked outside there was a 400lb bear standing up looking into the passenger side window of Kathy's truck. I asked her if she had left any food in the truck and she said she did have a little inside. I went outside and told him to back off and since he had not yet gotten into the truck he backed off and started circling the front yard. all the time the dogs were barking at him. I jumped in the truck and parked it in our garage.
The dogs saved us from having the bear tear the truck up. The bear finally left after finding no available food.
It's pretty interesting how the dogs interact with bears. Usually the first time a bear encounters our dogs they are pretty easy to scare off. The next time the bear will start to ignore them, but the constant harassment will cause them to leave fairly soon as long as they don't find any food.
The take home message here is that as long as the bear doesn't find food they will leave. If however he does find food he will stay and eat everything he can get his paws on and nothing on earth can get him to leave untill he's done. They are extremely smart. Many bears can open a car door to get at food. Often they will just break the window to get to it.
Bears are extremely strong! It is nothing for a 300 lb bear to turn over a huge rock or bolder to get at a few grubs. A large one can tear the door right off of a car. Last week one tore the side off of a friends 5th wheel trailer.
The good news is if you make sure that bears can't find food on your property they will just pass through and leave you alone. I've heard that a dogs nose is 30 times as sensitve as a humans and a bears nose is 10 times more sensitive than a dogs. Here in bear country everyone sees bears all summer long and we all get along just fine.
Date: Monday, June, 16th 2008 @ 12:21:13 PMViews: 803
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