When are we going to learn?

It seems that bears are more intelligent than humans and they are paying the ultimate price! Bears are opportunistic feeders. That simply means that they go where the food is and when they find food at one location they are smart enough to return the next time they are in the neighborhood. In other words, if you feed a bear today he will come back tomorrow.

Yep, bears are smarter than people.

People feed bear. Bear eats food. People think bear is cute. Bear leaves. Bear knows a good thing when he tastes it. Bear returns. People name the cute bear ‘Cuddles’ and they refer to it as, “Our bear.”

Some time between the third and tenth visit the bear inadvertently damages, (1) a fence. (2) A tree. (3) A vehicle. Or, (4) in his scavenging he tips over the garbage cans and scatters trash from here to a hot place.
The nice people excommunicate ‘their’ bear, and on top of that Cuddles is no longer Cuddles and he is no longer cute, he has over night become the, ‘MENACE FROM HADES!’

Yep, the nice people are no longer nice, now they are irate. The bear has inconvenienced them. Perhaps hit them in that most holy of holies, their wallet.

The cry goes out, “Call the police!”

The police call the bear control agent from the D.N.R..

The nice people are assured that the ‘cute’ bear will be transported to a nice new home in the Ocala forest. (Believe me, if all of the bears that were supposedly transported to the Ocala forest were actually in the Ocala forest it would have more bears than trees!)

For some reason that defies logic the authorities don’t tell you that eventually the bear will, that is, WILL, return. Bears are like four legged homing pigeons, they come home! On the way home some of them are killed crossing roads, others are killed as they pass through another bear’s territory.

Oh well, dead bears don’t come home and they certainly are no longer cute, they are just dead. They will no longer damage your fence, scratch your car, scatter your garbage or frighten the boogers out of you, they are dead.

Perhaps we can learn from the State of Washington. They have a lot of bears and they were being overwhelmed by calls from irate property owners complaining about bears.

The authorities were forthright and honest when they let it be known, “If you call us on a bear problem it is a dead bear.”

The problem bear calls were reduced almost overnight by as much as 90%.

By being up front with the public tens of thousands of dollars were saved and many bears were spared.
No matter what you are told, problem bears that are trapped in the grand State of Florida have a death sentence hanging over their heads.

If you want to help save the bears:

  1. Put the garbage curbside on the morning of pickup. (If you put it out the night before pickup you might as well hang a big sign on your garbage cans that reads: ‘BEAR SMORGASBORD!’
  2. It might be an inconvenience but if you wash your garbage cans at least once a week it not only cuts down on all of those enticing odors but it also cuts down on the fly problem as well as the bears. (Bears have a sense of smell almost unparalleled in nature.)
  3. If you are a nature lover and like to feed the birds please remember that bears love bird seed almost as much as they love Dunkin’ Donuts so sometimes you have to make a choice when living in bear country, feed the birds and the bears and kill the bears, or, don’t feed the birds.
  4. If you have pets and feed them out of doors don’t let the spilled food accumulate and remember to dispose of any left over pet food.

As Pogo said so well, “We has met the enemy and he is us.” Let the change begin with you.

Think green,

Chaz

P.S. If you have a pet peeve let me know and I will treat it in the blog. C

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