Bear and cub snatch peanuts from Manitou home
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- Created on Friday, 22 July 2011 19:35
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
A bear and her cub walked into a house near the Manitou Springs foothills Friday morning, startling a man inside.
Noises woke the homeowner's 26-year-old grandson at 232 Crystal Park Road at about 11 a.m., said Division of Parks and Wildlife Officer Michael Seraphin.
He found the bears when he walked upstairs to investigate the sounds. The adult bear apparently had pushed open a sliding glass door that was left ajar.
The bears then walked out the way they came - but not empty-pawed: They took a bag of peanuts.
The house is in a residential area on the road leading into Crystal Park, but is not immediately adjacent to the forest. There is no plan to trap these bears, Seraphin said.
This is the second time in less than a week that a bear has entered a home in the Pikes Peak region.
A bear broke into a Cheyenne Canon home on Monday, probably lured by the smell of dog and cat food. Or maybe the bee hives outside.
Parks and Wildlife officials ask residents and visitors to take extra care to avoid attracting hungry bears to homes, cabins, campgrounds and picnic areas.
Wildlife officers have responded to a higher than normal level of calls about bears entering homes, garages, sheds, tents and chicken coops and damaging beehives in recent weeks.
The Division of Parks and Wildlife offers these tips for living in bear country.
Wildlife officials killed a bear that injured a teenage camper in his tent July 15 near Leadville. The bear had apparently ransacked a cooler outside a tent in an adjacent area of the camp prior to the incident.
"This has been a below average year for natural food for bears," explained Cory Chick, an area wildlife manager from Colorado Springs.
"During the summer, bears depend on green, palatable vegetation and bugs and other critters they find under rocks and logs as their primary food sources. But those natural food sources are harder to find in dry conditions."
People are making it too easy for bears to find unnatural food - garbage, pet food - around homes. And when bears find an easy food source, natural or not, they will frequent the area until it is gone.
"We are always going to have nuisance bears, but when bears are rewarded for foraging around houses and outbuildings, it increases the chances a nuisance bear becomes a dangerous bear," Chick added.
Flohrs says that before people begin feeling sorry for the bears and take it upon themselves to feed them, they should know that feeding a bear is the absolute worst thing a person can do for it.
"There is always potential for human injury when bears come close to people," said district wildlife officer Aaron Flohrs. "But the risk factors go way up when the bears are 'rewarded' by people feeding them - or when bears get people food in any manner."
The Division of Parks and Wildlife uses a "decision tree" to rate problem bears. Wildlife managers evaluate each conflict as to degree of urgency based on three categories.
The first and lowest is a "nuisance" bear, second is a "depredating" bear, and the third level is a "dangerous" bear.
Most bear reports are classified at the nuisance level. This category includes bears that may pose a threat to property or may have already damaged property, but there is no immediate threat to humans. Action for bears at this level include a variety of deterrent methods, trying to educate the people on how to coexist with bears, and as a last resort trap and relocate the problem bear.
On the other hand, depredating and dangerous bears are dealt with in stronger methods and as soon as possible.
If weather conditions improve by mid- to late August, the bears' fall food supply of fruit and acorns should be enough to satisfy their appetites.
In the meantime, the best solution is to recognize that Colorado is bear country and to learn to live with the bruins as responsibly as we can, said Chick.
PHOTO: File photo courtesy of the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife
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