Big bear hanging in there

By Mary Anderson
Staff Writer, The Courier-Tribune
July 7, 2002

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LEVEL CROSS - An American Black Bear spent Friday night and Saturday in a tree in Robbie and Stacie Wilson's backyard - and may not decide to leave his 30-foot perch for another day or two.

The plan is to leave him alone until he decides to come down. Then the young male is expected to head for the nearest woods. Depending on who is estimating, he weighs between 150 and 200 pounds.

The Wilsons, who live on Georgia Drive in Level Cross, thought their dog had treed a cat late Friday night. The animal was bigger than a cat and shaking a lot of limbs, so maybe was a raccoon.

"Then we saw this great big paw and I said, 'I don't know what it is, but it's huge,'" said Stacie Wilson. A bear never occurred to her.

"I've lived in this area my whole life and I've never seen a bear."

Neither has Steve Russell, assistant chief at the Level Cross Fire Department.

"The wildlife officers said bears aren't that unusual around here, but this is the first one I have ever seen," Russell said.

Sherri Lawson, a wildlife control expert with Critter Control in Greensboro, has seen quite a few black bears in her nearly 20 years in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation.

"Usually, they are stealthier than this one, but they are all over the place," Lawson said. There was one in a churchyard in Kernersville about a month ago, another in a Raleigh neighborhood in the past year.

Asst. Chief Russell said they had a couple of reports of a bear in the Level Cross neighborhood Friday night, but never could find anything.

Robbie Wilson had heard his three dogs barking, but just before midnight, one got out of the fence and "really went after something."

Stacie Wilson said they went to see where the dog got out and he was barking ferociously up a pine tree at the corner of three properties. A neighboring family's dogs were barking from their fence.

Sherri Lawson said the bear probably became frightened and instinct kicked in, so he climbed the nearest tree. Black bears are great climbers and use trees for food sources and for protection - though they have very few natural predators.

The Wilsons called 911. The deputy who responded had no doubt their huge creature was a black bear. North Carolina Wildlife officers told the Wilsons the best plan was to leave him alone and let him come down by himself. All the dogs had been put up the night before.

"They tried to rope off the area and keep people away so he (the bear) could calm down and climb down, but you know how people are when the word gets around," said Stacie Wilson. "I bet half of Randolph County has been by here."

The N.C. Wildlife officers will be back on Sunday morning to monitor the bear's condition. Black bears are protected by federal law as a threatened species.

Sherri Lawson said bears usually shy away from populated areas, but the drought may have affected the food sources such grasses, berries, insects and roots

"But, they are foragers and they will eat anything," Lawson said. "Another possibility is that they can get kind of silly during mating season."

Black bears mate in June, July and August. They are territorial and a male's territory may cover 15 square miles, overlapping the smaller territories of several females, Lawson said.

Wildlife biologists won't worry about the bear in the tree for at least 72 hours, and up to 96 hours, before they get concerned about dehydration, Lawson said. Food is not a problem because he has been out of hibernation long enough to have a lot of fatty tissue.

If a tranquilizer becomes necessary, there are those with antidotes to quickly reverse them and with a low dose, the bear could kind of slide down the tree.

The expectation is that when the bear gets calm and the area gets quiet, he will look around and decide he is OK and climb down the tree.