Having lived between the Poconos and Southern Florida, I’ve had to contend with many interesting creatures. From the land crabs who steal avocados in my backyard to the deer who eat all my plants, nature tends to choose me to pick on. However, none of these friendly woodland and beach-dwelling creatures compare to the absolute annoyance that is Eastern Black Bear.
Yes. Annoying.
Most people I talk to about my local black bears get all scared over them. While I definitely would NOT want to take one on, they’re definitely not scary. Usually, unless it is a mother bear with a cub, they are harmless. Most animals tend to not want to fight unless they have to. They actually tend to avoid humans when they can.
What they don’t try to avoid is our rubbish. Bears LOVE rubbish.
To illustrate how much bears love rubbish, one night, I was out on the side of my house enjoying myself. I was having a nice relaxing time until I heard footsteps coming around the side of a bush.
Thinking it was a person, I jumped up out of my seat and started yelling,” Who’s that? What are you doing here?” Then I heard the bear turn around, and, just as nonchalantly as it came in, he gently strolled back to where he came from.
At first I thought, “This is exactly what Michael Myers would do. This is it! I’m going to go into the shower and he’s going to turn out the lights and get me later!” However, I was lucky enough to see the bear’s little silhouette through the bushes. Again, not scary at all.
After he left, I sauntered inside to let him go about his bear business, working on his bear 401k and bear tax returns. When I came back, though, I saw the real scary part.
I came back and saw it everywhere. It was torn apart all over my driveway and my lawn. I was just so horrified by what happened. That bugger nicked my rubbish bin and flung its contents everywhere like he was on spring break! The audacity!
The real problem with bears is that they’re the worst house guests you can imagine. A bear coming by our house is usually common. Usually, they just mosey on by, maybe climb a tree, and it’s cute to see. That is day bears. Unfortunately, bears are like gremlins, where if you feed them after midnight, they become monsters. . . monsters I have to clean up after.
While I do have some resentment towards the bears (at least when it’s me who has to clean up after them) I have come to realise that maybe I shouldn’t blame them as much as I do.
In Florida, our biggest problem is hurricanes. The mosquitoes and no-see-umms are annoying, but they generally don’t knock over your shed or flood your neighbourhood. At least the bears get something out of my trash. They get a nice meal out of it. A hurricane just messes stuff up for the sake of messing it up.
Here in bear country, we have an understanding with nature. Most of the area around me is taken up by independent nature preserves and the Delaware Water Gap National Park. Even among the local hunters, despite the stereotypes, there is a lot of respect for nature, taking only what they need and not wasting anything they take.
There is a saying around here that encapsulates the way we see human-bear relations. “They were here first.” It might be Enby vs. Wild here, but I still have to respect the wild. I can’t go on a Kill Bill-style vengeance journey, but I can at least make it as hard as I can for those bears to throw my rubbish everywhere. Luckily, there are a few bear defence tactics I use to keep them away from my rubbish.
One of the guards that was breached the night of my aforementioned bear encounter was our broken rubbish bin. Where I live, it is common to have rubbish bins that are bear-proof (like the one pictured above). These bins are usually the first line of defence when dealing with bears. They have special locking mechanisms for when the lid closes that are meant to keep the bears from getting into the rubbish.
Our old bin’s gimmick was that there was a little shielded hole on the top which housed a trigger. The trigger was what made the lock open and allowed one to open it up with the downside of feeling like arthritis is going to kick in about twenty years early. Our new one that we have has a little hooded paddle that goes along the front of the bin and does not make my hands go through any Herculean feats of pain tolerance.
For those times where your cans fail or you are too stubborn to let those pesky bears dictate your rubbish bin buying decisions, the best thing to do is to keep the rubbish bin inside of a garage or a strong shed. On trash night, you have to try and take the rubbish down to the road as late as you can, and hope the bear already checked your house.
Going through this, there will probably still be times when you have to just clean up after them. In cases like this, there is also a way to keep the bears away while you’re doing that.
The night the bear got into my bin, it so happened to be trash night. I kept it away by making as much loud noise as I could. Bears are easy to scare off. They know to watch out for loud humans with their guns and deadly automobiles. Usually honking a horn or playing loud music is enough to scare them off. Bears tend to hang around and wait for humans to leave, so it is best to keep any noise going while picking up after any bear incidents.
For those among us who are afraid of bear attacks, this same theory applies to warding them off. While I have not encountered this specific problem and am not a park ranger, those who have all said that scaring them away like this still works.
And of course, if all else fails, the best way to keep a bear out is by not living in bear country. Then you just have to live with no-see-ums, armadillos and land crab herds that can pop your tires like I have in Florida. Nature always finds a way.
