The Bear Facts - On The Other| David Scribner's column from the Berkshire Other

The Bear Facts

By David Scribner

Springtime in the Berkshires, daffodils are blooming, mountainsides shed their brown winter hue for the luminous green, and about 1,000 black bears, ravenous from a five-month hibernation, are on the prowl, looking for patches of skunk cabbage, stray hickory nuts and acorns, a bee hive or two - and the nearest bird feeder.

Six years ago, Massachusetts voters, persuaded that hunting and trapping were inhumane ways of treating the wildlife population, overwhelmingly approved a statewide referendum restricting bear hunting. Since then, bears have come to town with increasing regularity. They stroll down village main streets, patrol city neighborhoods, make themselves at home in backyard patios, scavenge from garbage cans, scamper up trees when confronted by the environmental police. Tranquilized, intruders are carted back to their forest preserves, only to return to gorge themselves on sunflower seeds and thistle, cracked corn, mixed seed and suet. To the bears, those backyard feeders mounted at eye-level on poles or dangling from shepherd's crooks must look like a heaven-sent farmer's market.

Tolerant relations between the usually timid bear population and Berkshirites took a turn for the worse last summer in the neighborhood around Stockbridge Bowl, the lake adjacent to the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home of Tanglewood. The area is dotted with cottages and upscale residences where second-home owners relish the charm of country life and proximity to the region's many cultural venues. It has also become a preferred habitat for bears particularly fond of those predictable days of the week when garbage was set out for pickup and of the well-stocked feeders Bowl denizens obligingly insist on leaving up. Within a three-week period in July, Stockbridge police had received more than 50 complaints of black bears breaking into garages, cavorting with garbage cans, and sleeping on the roofs of SUVs.

The showdown had actually begun one night in April. In the reverse of the Goldilocks fairy tale, a bear cub broke into NBC film critic Gene Shalit's Stockbridge bedroom. The way a bemused Stockbridge Police Chief Richard Wilcox explains it, a mother bear and her two cubs were foraging nearby when she discovered a stash of bird seed atop an air-conditioner outside the bedroom where Shalit was fast asleep. She pulled the unit out of the window and smelling more food inside, tried to wedge herself through the opening. She was too large, but one of her cubs managed to squeeze in. Shalit awoke to see a 100-pound bear cub with a lampshade on its head rolling around on his bedroom floor. Looking up, the cub saw a big hairy person.

"It was a case of mutual terror," Wilcox observed, then continued with characteristic fondness for the available pun. "I think it was a situation that would give anyone - ah - paws." While the cub headed for the kitchen, Shalit ran to phone for help. He and a local constable managed to coax the young animal out the window.

From that point on, the standoff between man and beast grew more provocative and frequent. One bold bear wandered into a rehearsal at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, scattering actors and stage personnel, then padded calmly out. Another forced its way into the kitchen of a local orthopedist, and before the doctor could find a fire extinguisher to fend off the intruder, the creature had rifled the waste basket and left.

The confrontations reached a crisis one July afternoon when a bear acting aggressively came too close to an elderly woman and her eight-year-old granddaughter in their yard. It refused to retreat, even after environmental police had yelled at it, used pepper spray, and shot it with plastic bullets. The animal was then shot for real, the first of three such clashes with bears who had lost their fear of humans.

The incidents caused a firestorm of debate over how to coexist with nature without going to war with bears. At a packed information session conducted at the Stockbridge Town Hall by the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, proponents and opponents of tough new one summer Stockbridge resident declared: "We are not comfortable with bears. To me, a bear belongs in a zoo or up on a hill." Another resident expressed his fond admiration for these wild animals and admitted that he had, on more than one occasion, fed them. One summer denizen denied culpability: "I'm not feeding bears; I'm feeding birds."

An irate Fisheries and Wildlife board chairman George Darey, a native of Stockbridge and devoted sportsman, blames Bowl residents. "By leaving out their garbage and their unwashed outdoor grills, by keeping their bird feeders up in the summer, these people have trained the bears - and future generations of bears - to come to their neighborhoods," he complains. "Then they get upset, and want a permit to shoot them."

Fisheries and Wildlife biologist Tom Keefe has watched the bear problem grow during the last decade, "People are creating the problem. Bears are now used to car doors slamming, and ambulance sirens, and they look both ways before crossing."

In spite of public controversy, the proper approach to an increasingly intrusive bear population remained illusive. The membership of the Stockbridge Bowl neighborhood sought a permit for using dogs to chase bears away but because the state permitting procedure took so long - another consequence of hunting restrictions - the summer tourist season concluded without the appearance of houndsmen - but also without another bear shooting.

Close encounters with bears are not likely to diminish this year, either. Keefe points out that black bears are territorial, so that as their population increases, individuals are driven to seek new feeding grounds. And since their natural forest habitat is gradually growing up closer to towns, it's more likely bears will be downwind of birdfeeders and garbage cans.

Hopefully, over the winter Stockbridge Bowl property owners have gained a new respect for wildlife and installed heavy-duty, critter-proof refuse bins. Hopefully, upon reflection they've decided that the pleasure of watching finches, grosbeaks, cardinals and chickadees is not worth the price of a demolished country kitchen - or a dead bear. We will know soon enough.

When all is said and done, Chief Wilcox seems to have come up with the best approach: "If you happen to meet a bear, just grin and - well, you know the rest."

This article was written for Yankee magazine.