Black bear
Creak. Bang. Bump. Asleep, I registered these sounds, but came wide awake at the sound of CRACK! and THUMP! The dog growled, and the cat hid. Could it be that the weight of recent snow had finally broken a rafter in the house? No. The crack came from a fence post breaking.
A black bear had rocked our fence until it broke. Why? Because the odors emanating from our compost bin were irresistable to a hungry bear.
A few photos are available in the gallery.
Eventually, the bear ate what it wanted, and wandered off. Along the way, it broke some boards in another section of our fence. We called our neighbor as we listened to the bear rummage and thump through several back yards.
We also called 911. Later, I received a very nice call from a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife agent. It may be that a bear sighted about a mile away a few nights ago is our visitor. WDFW had set a trap for the bear. With our report, they have a better idea of the bear’s direction of travel.
I described the bear as about the size of a St. Bernard, but it’s hard to tell how big it really was because it was so dark. My camera does not take low-light pictures well.
Black bears (Ursus americanus) are most common in the western United States, although they occur in almost every state. Outside the state of Alaska, Washington State has the highest estimated population of black bears at around 30,000 animals.
Nevertheless, we were surprised to see the bear. We live near a large wooded area and frequently see or hear deer and coyotes. In our nearly ten years here, we’ve never sighted a bear in this forest.
Nor have we seen signs of bear damage to trees in this forest. Black bears can damage coniferous trees in the spring while foraging for sapwood, and the lack of this damage suggests this bear is not really a resident here.
Even though black bear attacks against humans are rare, I stayed inside the house while our transient visitor feasted on the remains of our compost pile. Beside me was a bright flashlight and a boat horn.
This morning we surveyed the relatively minor damage: one fence post and a couple of boards need to be replaced. I won’t be able to replace the fence post until the ground thaws, so until then, we’ll prop the fence panel up and hope the bear does not return.
So something went bump in the night, and it could have been much worse. We lost a few hours of sleep, and some future Saturday we’ll spend digging out the old post and replacing boards.
UPDATE, January 11…Wildlife agents baited a bear trap with donuts and captured a female black bear estimated to weigh 250 pounds. The paws on this bear may be smaller than the prints we observed. After relocating the bear to a remote area along Hood Canal, agents set another trap near our neighborhood. So far, no other bear has been captured.
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Poor hungry bear. My dog would have tried to challenge it, I think — though she is a little frightened of the coyotes (they wander freely through our neighborhood at deep dusk).
@Sandy: I don’t know if it was a male or female bear, but it was certainly on the large side, compared to other black bears I’ve seen in western Washington. A neighbor a few backyards down the block reports the bear emptied their bird feeder.
Our dog would have barked at it and then tried to “herd” it. I feel sorry for the bear that it must have been that hungry.
@Kathy: The fish and game officer stopped by today with a trap, and we had a nice conversation about how magnificent these creatures can be. This one was clearly hungry, but it didn’t look like it had missed many meals!