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Can you live in harmony with bears? Oh, definitely, but it demands a change in the way we usually think of animals. For one thing, we need to understand the nature of bears. They are migrating animals who constantly travel in a large circle across land they consider their own. They don't recognize or care about man-made property divisions. They also don't particularly care to interact with humans. In fact, they are downright frightened to meet one and will usually run the other way.

A grizzly will ignore a person who doesn't move or threaten it in any way. Make a lot of noise near a brown bear and it will run away. There are only three situations that I know of where a bear will attack a man. The first is common to most wild animals and humans. Stand between a mother and her cub and you're in trouble. The second, involves cornering the animal in a situation that frightens it. Lastly, under extreme duress, in situations such as near starvation, the bear will attack.

When I lived in Central Maine, I had a few acres far in the woods. Down the road, a woman had gone on vacation and asked a neighbor to check her house plants. This the neighbor was doing until the day she unlocked the door, walked in, and came face to face with a brown bear. Cornered in the bathroom with the telephone, she called the police, who came and shot the bear.

The mother of twins, the bear had been foraging for food. Her cubs were left orphaned, the police unable to find them. However, another bear, also the mother of twins, adopted the two cubs.

Now, as any mother can tell you, the more children you have, the less likely they are to sleep. The four cubs refused to hibernate and the poor mother was left with four wide awake babies through the winter. Because I lived carefully, leaving a small footprint on the earth, she chose to spend the time in a grove of pine towards the back of my lot. I had a good size stand of raspberry bushes to feed from and I didn't disturb them. No problem.

In the time I was there, I had many run-ins with wild bears. It's hard not to recognize when one is close. Their smell is quite similar to that of an old wet dog or a woman's fur coat on a rainy day in a crowded subway. They tend to appear near berry bushes and you can easily spot their spore there. It lays on the ground, dark and round, in bunches the approximate size of a fist.

Animals don't think like humans and don't live like humans. Understand that and you can live harmoniously with any beast. Think about them as pets or zoo creatures and they will react. You'll get exactly what you deserve.

Learn more about this author, Gail Dennehy.
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