More Bear Tales
By Sandy Balayan
May 2025
This cub reporter was overwhelmed by the number of responses to my request for your stories of bear encounters for an article in the April issue! Bear with me as I add a few more stories I couldn’t fit in last month when I had to take a paws. I know this pun thing is not funny to everyone, so if I have made a boo-boo please excuse me. I am hungry for laughs!
Alexis Rae had a close encounter about six months after moving to East Otis. “My first spring here, a bear started coming around every evening. He had patches of hair missing on his back and looked to be about 300 pounds. He was big. We had a dumpster in our back parking lot and he would try to get into it every night. One evening he broke into the old garbage shed, ripping a whole plank of wood off the side to get in. Another night he climbed our back stairs and clawed at our door to get into the house, so I threw a muffin out the window and he retreated back down the stairs to get it. We knew he was hungry and might reappear, but we enjoyed seeing him from a distance in the safety of our home.”
Bear with bird feeder. Photo: Adobe Stock photo
Karen Brannon had a great interaction with a mom and two cubs. She was puttering around the kitchen when her dogs started barking. “I looked outside and saw a bear sitting on her rump in the middle of the yard. I tried to shush the dogs and grabbed my phone. When I got to the door to take a picture the bear was on the move. I noticed something ahead of her also moving. Climbing down from a tree in my yard were two tiny cubs that then followed the mom out of my yard and into the woods. I had always wanted to see a bear and was thrilled to see not one, but three! What a bonus, and the cubs were so cute!”
Trish Neale Daly saw a bear climbing a tree and shimmying across the clothes line to reach the bird feeder. It took him three times, but he finally got the feeder! There isn’t much you can do to discourage a hungry bear.
Bear contemplating a bird feeder. Photo: Adobe Stock photo
Dealing with these hungry interlopers is part of living in Otis. We all must remember the safety tips we have mentioned many times in the Otis Observer and be respectful of these amazing creatures. Interacting with them and making them too used to humans by feeding them always leads to them becoming nuisances. If you call the state police, they tag them and try to relocate them. Eventually, they will be put down if they continually get tagged as nuisances. The best rule? Enjoy them from afar. Put your garbage safely away and do not feed the bears or the birds in your yard. Our beautiful woods here in Otis are their world and we need to respect their space and use common sense.
Any moose stories you want to share? Contact me at otismemories@gmail.com. Bears looking at you kid!
