Bears. I have dragged
my feet on this one, but it’s time to write a blog post on bears.
Before coming here, I knew Alaska was bear country. And I looked forward to these innocuous experiences that we have indeed had:
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| At the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center watching a brown bear eat its dinner. |
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| Timothy and Matthew touching and comparing the skulls and furs of the three types of bears in Alaska: black, brown, and polar bears. |
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| Joshua at a visitor's center learning double time all about bears. |
And I thought, prior to our arrival, that the locals would
be pretty chill about bears. They would
tell me how rare it is to see, much less be attacked or killed by a bear. Only 6 people have been killed by bears in
Alaska in the last 130 years, so really a slim slim chance and not worth
stressing about it. The locals would
calm my irrational tourist fears, the logical part of my brain will take over, life would move on and I would not be freaked out by the bears here. Right?
Not so much. Instead,
according to the local newspaper (the Alaska Dispatch News), recent bear
encounters have “set Alaskans on edge” which I have totally observed around me.
I overheard a conversation at church of
local people talking in surprised, horrified, concerned voices about the 2
people killed by bears in recent days. I
immediately go home and read up on what happened:
One of these victims was running a race maybe 20 miles from
our house. Plus there have been
non-lethal attacks, like this mountain biker just north of Anchorage: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2017/06/25/two-injured-in-separate-brown-bear-attacks-in-southcentral-alaska-saturday/
And last Sunday there was a front page cover story about
bears getting into trash cans and the recent spike in demand for bear-proof
trash cans (with a latch that turns to lock the can):
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| Front page last Sunday. |
So the locals are talking about bears, and they’re concerned.
When I attended a conference at a local church (Classical
Conversations Practicum for my fellow CCers!) they repeatedly mentioned that
parents need to CLOSELY supervise their kids when they play outside during
lunch time because “this is Alaska!” with smiles and grins. I happened to be sitting next to the C.C.
state-level coordinator who helped put the conference together and she leaned
over to me, knowing I was not a local, and told me a mother and baby bear were
seen on the church property 3 days prior.
Hence the repeated warnings to keep your kids close.
When I get the chance I like to ask local Moms…what do you do
about your kids playing in your yard at home?
Are you ALWAYS out there right next to them? Is it safe to run inside to grab something? And what if you actually see a bear? Then what?!
Honestly, the answers I’ve heard are not reassuring. One Mom said “I don’t know” because they live
in the middle of Anchorage and there are no forests around, so she felt safe. But she’s about to move to the outskirts of
Anchorage and into a forested area, so she’s now asking the same questions I am. Another Mom who does live in a wooded area
(as we currently do) said the thought of seeing a bear used to freak her out
when she first moved here, but now that they’ve had a few bear encounters and
they’re still okay she’s adjusted to the fear/risk. She’s just learned to live with it. She encourages her kids to be loud when playing
outside to avoid bear encounters. And
yes, she said she is always outside when her kids are outside, pretty close to
them. It’s important to not forget stuff
inside because then you have to round up all of the kids and bring them in with
you to get that one thing you forgot.
She told me that her daughter used to be afraid at night that a bear
would come into her room at night and attack.
And this mother would calmly reassure her daughter that bears like to
stay outside and would not come into her bedroom at night. But she lost that line of reassurance when
she heard this story a few weeks ago of a bear in Anchorage breaking into a kids bedroom at night. And now she needs
to teach her daughter what to do if that happens to her.
Then there are the two times that we have seen bears in our
own yard:
David saw a mother and baby bear in our yard on our fifth
day here. He was out by the tiny house
on the property and walking back towards our house when he saw the bear right
by our living room window. So he bolted
for the door to get inside the house and told us to look out the window. I never saw the bears, but I saw David
transition from a casual walk to a sprint for the door. (Thankfully the bears were afraid of David
too and ran into the woods.)
Ironically, when David had that bear encounter Timothy was
off at “zoo camp” for the day. It was at
the Anchorage zoo and the topic of the day was, you guessed it: bears. One of their activities was hiding peanut
butter treats around an (empty) bear cage, then allowing the kids watch the
bear find the treats they hid around the enclosure when the bear was returned
to its cage. Timothy loved it. But David had a more legit bear encounter
that had no registration fee.
As soon as David saw the bear in our yard we bought some
bear (pepper) spray and now keep that in our kitchen and mudroom. It’s not a fail proof idea, but something,
right?! We hike with the bear spray, and
bear bells, and again tell our kids to just be loud when outside. We read this article online…it’s about how
parents can teach their kids to be safe in bear-country.
About 4 weeks have passed since David saw that bear and I
was getting a little more relaxed. One
lady at church told me she just WISHED she could see a bear once…she’s lived
here 7 years and never seen a bear. And
I could feel myself relaxing a little bit.
Until this morning when David saw two bears down in our driveway. They walked up the hill to our backyard and I
shot this video:
You can hear I’m a little freaked out in this video. You guys…THIS IS WHERE MY KIDS PLAY!!!!
I like the signs that say “Be careful when recreating in
bear territory”. That’s nice. But all I can think is…what if we LIVE in
bear territory??!
So that’s the local scene around me and our two bear
sightings. Not super reassuring. This has, honestly, led to a stressed-out-me at times. I love being here. So so so many adventures. And I think next I should do one big happy
fun-filled post of the super things we’re doing because we are NOT holed up in
our house in fear. But hearing about
these attacks is stressful. Not being
able to just relax outside with the kiddos is a big loss in life. When both sets of Grandparents came to visit
it felt like there was a critical mass of adults around so we could recreate
outside. But if it’s just me and the
kids?! Much less fun to be outside.
In a related homestead update:
We returned home from our most recent travels and saw that
the electric fence around the chicken coop and chicken run area is complete (as
you could see in the video above too…the electric fence zaps the baby bear in about
second #4 of the video and scares it away).
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| Recently completed electric fence (and chicken wire fence) around the chicken coop and area where they run. |
So now we can play outside in our new electric fence
playland area. We haven’t done that yet,
but now I need to figure out if being surrounded by 3 active kids and 23
chickens and messing with an electric fence gate is more or less stressful than
being outside the electric fence with the bears.
I leave you with this sign hanging in a bathroom while we
were traveling:
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| Sign in a bathroom. |
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