Then you tell the officer, who answers the phone at the police station, “A bear did it.”
There’s a pregnant pause at the other end of the line until finally when the skeptical officer gruffly says, “Lady, you know it’s against the law to make a false report.”
Unfortunately, a bear really stole a car in Colorado the other day. It managed to open the vehicle’s unlocked door, then sent it careening 125 feet into a thicket. And it honked the horn to boot.
Ben Story, 17, said he and his family were asleep in their home when the bear managed to open the unlocked door of his 2008 Toyota Corolla early Friday and climbed aboard. Once there, it apparently knocked the shift on the automatic transmission into neutral and away it went.
Fortunately for Ben’s credibility, neighbors called 911 and deputies freed the bear by opening the door with a rope—from a healthy distance. It then scampered into the woods.
Bears seeking food often open unlocked doors, and it matters not if they’re car doors or house doors, according to Tyler Baskfield, a Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman.
Bolivar County residents might take heed of Ben’s plight. Not too long ago several bears crossed the Mississippi River from Arkansas and took up residence along the levee. A cub even scaled a tree in Rosedale.
For the bears, it was probably like a homecoming, even if their ancestors’ stomping grounds have changed quite a bit from the old days.
“Black bears were once plentiful throughout Mississippi,” explained Brad Young, an expert on the critters. “One of the primary reasons for their decline was loss of habitat over the last 150 years. Today our state’s bear population is increasing.”
Mississippi landowners were recently given an opportunity to receive financial incentives by enrolling eligible land in a new program called SAFE, which was designed to restore habitat for the federally protected black bears.
The majority of the acreage in the program is to be dedicated to restoring native hardwood forests and forested wetlands in portions of the Mississippi Valley that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has identified as key zones for black bear recovery.
The program’s aim is to create favorable habitat conditions by incorporating a mix of soft-and hard-mast species to provide year-round food sources, escape cover and elevated den cavities.
Black bear populations have slowly increased in the western part of Mississippi as they migrated across the Mississippi River from Arkansas and Louisiana.
Since 2005, black bears in the state have been successful at reproducing and rearing cubs, indicating that Mississippi’s once abundant black bear population is on the rebound.
Black bears tend to be shy, and are often more anxious about running into you than you are about running into them. Nevertheless, here are a few tips from the BEAR League on how to avoid a close encounter of the hard-to-bear kind:
Don’t feed ’em. Make birdfeeders inaccessible to bears or take them down. Don’t leave windows or doors open, and by all means, bear in mind screens aren’t bear-proof. Be sure your doors are solid wood or metal, and while you’re at it, install and use heavy deadbolts.
Frequently spray Pine Sol on window and door casings to mask food odors coming from inside. Buy a motion-activated barking dog device. Replace single-pane windows with double-pane ones. Securely block access to under-house crawl spaces. Don’t leave garbage near the house or pet food outside.
Those tips might avoid embarrassing calls similar to the one we once made to the Ma Bell from a neighbor’s phone to report our pet rabbit had just eaten our telephone cord.
“Is this a crank call?” the telephone employee asked.