When we tout the benefits of country living, safety is often at the top of the list. (“I never lock my doors!”) Break-ins and vandalism are rare – you don’t expect to walk out of your house in the morning and see a car with a busted out window, right?
And yet there I was last week, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, trying to make sense of the bluish clumps of window glass strewn all over the gravel; the stripe of car-junk (sleeping bag, jumper cables, pants, socks) that seemed to flow out of the car’s gaping window frame and onto the ground.
It became obvious very quickly that the vandal was of the ursine variety – Ursus americanus, specifically. A black bear. My housemate Ben had left a few 50-pound bags of corn in the backseat of his car, and a barbecue grill that may have had a chunk or two of charred meat still attached. The bear had smashed his window, ripped open the feed corn, scrupulously tongue-cleaned the grill.
My own truck took a hit as well. I’d left the drivers’ side window open, which the bear took as an invitation. He’d crawled in and devoured a package of cupcakes, then rummaged through the extended cab. The inside of my truck was coated with bear hair and muddy paw prints.
I’m guessing the beast was a small male; small because he fit through my window, male because that seems to be the gender of most “problem” bears. Sub-adult and adult male bears travel widely, which gets them into trouble, while females and cubs tend to stay in well-defined home ranges. In a fascinating 2002 study done by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, radio-collared female black bears had a mean home range of 36.2 square miles. Males had an average range of 158.1 square miles. The most far ranging male in the study – a six year old – considered 391.5 square miles his “turf.”
In August, a bear’s diet is transitioning from summer forage (tall nodding sedge, jewelweed, jack-in-the-pulpit, among other things) to fall foods, including berries and high-protein mast crops. In prolific nut years, bear sightings are down – they’re content to stay in the woods. In poor nut years, they’ll often turn to Option B and seek nourishment in corn fields; as a result, bear sightings go up.
With the cool wet weather stunting field corn, and potentially acorn and beechnut crops, Option C may include cupcakes and bags of chicken food. The public service announcements imploring you to keep bird feeders and barbecue grills under wraps seem especially resonant this year.
To view the entire Stratton Mountain bear study, visit the department’s online library at http://www.vtfishandwildlife.com./library.cfm?libbase_=Reports_and_Documents
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