As far as viral animal videos go, this video from Missoula, Montana, in 2003 is an all-time classic… that’s why it goes viral every couple of years, and it is once again making the rounds on the internet.
Black bears are a rather comical animal all around. They just love to get themselves into trouble whether it is locked in a car in Gatlinburg, or in someone’s house in Lake Tahoe… their curiosity always seems to find them in the most unusual situations. With ongoing urban sprawl and their love for anything that can be considered edible, we are just going to have more and more encounters with these incredibly smart animals.
The American Black Bear
The American black bear is the most common and widely distributed bear species in North America. Thanks to modern conservation efforts and regulated hunting, their populations have rebounded significantly over the past century and they now can be found in at least 40 U.S. states. I generally don’t associate my home state of Wisconsin as bear country, and I assume most do not either, but it actually has a whopping 24,000 estimated black bears… #7 behind states like Alaska, California and Maine (another sleeper state). Idaho, Washington and Oregon help round out the top 7
These highly adaptable omnivores traditionally inhabit heavily forested areas where they forage for a diverse diet of berries, nuts, roots, insects, and occasionally small mammals. Despite their name, their coats can range in color from pitch black to brown, cinnamon, or even a rare white phase found in specific regions. As primarily solitary animals, they rely on vast territories to find enough food to build the crucial fat reserves needed to survive their winter hibernation.
Urban Sprawl
As human development continues to expand deeper into traditional wildlife habitats, the boundaries between the wilderness and suburbia have blurred. This geographic overlap has led to a dramatic increase in black bears being spotted in urban and residential neighborhoods, and unfortunately, that means more negative human/bear interactions. The primary driver for this shift is food. Black bears possess an incredibly powerful sense of smell and are naturally opportunistic feeders. When natural food sources become scarce due to drought, seasonal changes, or habitat fragmentation, bears quickly realize that human settlements offer concentrated, high-calorie meals that require very little energy to obtain. And that can be bad news for bears.
Once a bear discovers that a suburban neighborhood offers unsecured garbage cans, pet food left on porches, grease-filled barbecue grills, and bird feeders, it often becomes habituated to the area. These bears are highly intelligent and possess excellent memories, meaning they will return repeatedly to locations where they previously found an easy meal. Unfortunately, this habituation causes them to lose their natural fear of humans, which drastically increases the risk of property damage, vehicle collisions, and dangerous human-wildlife conflicts. Wildlife agencies continuously stress that the most effective way to keep bears in the woods and out of neighborhoods is by aggressively managing human-generated attractants.
In bear territory, most calls to wildlife services end up being bear complaints. Whether it’s a bear in the garbage, wandering around houses or even breaking into stuff, it happens a lot. We see it quite a bit in Tennessee from visitors to the Smoky Mountains, where the growing urban center in places like Gatlinburg have normalized humans for the local bear population.
The truth is, it is highly preventable to keep bears out of your yard or your car. Often times, if you properly store food, garbage and waste… they will never bug you. But sometimes, they get themselves into predicaments and have to be dealt with. This bear here in Montana clearly did just that as he climbed a tree in someone’s yard and didn’t want to come down. The wildlife department ultimately had to be called to remove the bear, which is always a tricky situation since you want to move it without any amount of harm to the animal.
Missoula Black Bear
In this case, officials devised a plan that you will see from time to time, but it looks like the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a Looney Tunes cartoon. With the bear up in the tree, and unwilling to come down, they decided to try and tranquilize the bear, and then catch it’s lifeless body with a trampoline. it’s pretty straightforward really… the idea was that the bear would pass out, fall out of the tree and land safely on the trampoline. Easy peasy.
The idea, though, didn’t go quite as well as the execution. The agent shoots the bear with the dart, knocking the bear out cold, and subsequently out of the tree. Really, he sticks the landing as good as he could for being completely unconscious… but then
The bear falls and lands on the trampoline and shoots back up into the air cartwheeling out of position and… BOOM… he hits the ground… HARD.
Ultimately the bear was fine, and was eventually relocated to a more suitable area, but you can imagine he woke up pretty confused.
And here’s a follow-up video about how they went about releasing him, as well some reactions from folks in the neighborhood:
