08 July 2011

Bad News: Bears

A potentially dangerous situation is brewing in the community of Salcha, where two mother grizzly bears are roaming the community, looking for food and getting into trouble. 

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Art Thompson Jr., owner of the Salchaket Roadhouse, said Friday that the bears have been around for about a month looking for food in the community about 30 miles southeast of Fairbanks. He's been taking garbage to the dump every day to keep the back of the roadhouse clean and bear-free. 


The bears are pretty much going house to house in the community of about 1,000 people where Fairbanks-area residents have weekend homes, he said. 

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Thompson said a man saw the two sows and the five cubs together walking through his yard.

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... one of the mother bears hooked her claw around the door handle of a Mazda, bent the door back and got inside to get at the groceries. The bear shattered the front window and tore up the inside of the car. The insurance company came out to assess the damage and determined the car was totaled.


They've done a lot of damage already ... but it occurs to me that, up until a few years ago, the headline would have been "Salcha Residents shoot seven marauding grizzlies". Sigh.
Read more at the link.

2 comments:

threecollie said...

Which we believe is the exact reason why coyotes, which although not bears, are a nuisance, are now bold enough to come right up on porches. They used to be heard but not seen. Now they eat dogs right off leashes with folks on the other end. Glad we don't live where there are bears that eat Mazdas.

joated said...

I knew bears were omnivores...but Mazdas? How do they fit into that animal and vegetable diet?

BTW, I like your thought of what the headline would have been a few years ago. Would that it had happened that way in this instance. Done on the hush-hush (except for the BANG! BANG! seven times or more since they are grizzlies) it could have filled a few freezers.