I was talking to someone about yesterday’s post. I was reminded that to many people, non-city landscapes are full of many things they find threatening because they don’t understand them. The bears we have here are Black Bears. They do not like to interact with human beings, but they love to rummage through our trash cans or eat the grain out of birdfeeders. Nowadays, the only danger is getting between mama and her cub. Like all mothers, they are very protective. In the past, when we had open dumps, there were “dump bears.” When you drove up to throw out your garbage, they’d come running. You better have a box or bag that had something interesting to a bear and throw it out first. Say if you just had an old piece of furniture that you are throwing away, they could become very aggressive and try to look through your car for their kind of goodies. Pretty much everyone in those days had hearty breakfast which included bacon. You saved the bacon grease and poured it over the contents of the one bag of trash you had for the bears. If there were more than one bear in the dump when you came, the bears would fight over that bag and ignore you. This time of year, the bears are particularly hungry as they are not long out of their hibernation, but they are still shy.
I believe many city people are afraid of bears because they have heard of brown beer specie called Grizzlies. You don’t want ever to startle a Grizzly. They live in the mountainous west, and as far as I know, they were never native to northern Minnesota. As I was told as I was growing up by my grandparents, the most dangerous thing in the woods is another human being.
