“People can pretty much take care of themselves,” I remember my father telling me. “If we get into trouble we can usually figure a way to get out of it. It’s probably our own fault we’re in trouble in the first place.”
My father undoubtedly never thought I would remember so much of what he told me, especially an observation that implies a high degree of personal responsibility. A habitual screw-up even as a kid, I figured if I took responsibility for my screw-ups I could perhaps approach something resembling redemption. It worked…well, some of the time.
“Animals, on the other hand,” continued my father, “don’t have that luxury. Animals are at the mercy of us humans and don’t have a say in the trouble we put on them.”
Those words colored my life more than my father could ever have known. In the face of the way we humans treat animals, I usually find myself on the animals’ side. I figure we two-leggeds can probably help ourselves. If you think man’s inhumanity to man is egregious, consider man’s inhumanity to animals…poor, dumb animals.
Often we don’t even realize how our actions inadvertently affect animals. Having been granted dominion over most everything, we go about our business with little regard for those we believe lack sentience, feelings or enough brains to understand what we do. But I think that is wrong.
We don’t consider bears, for example, to be the fastest swimmers in the gene pool. Faced with a bruin in the boonies, however, there is no question in our viscera that the bear is higher on the food chain. He may not be smarter than we are, but he is darned sure bigger, meaner, grouchier and hungrier. The only time we are higher on the food chain is when our opposable thumb can work the bolt on our varmint rifle.
I watched this morning, as Crested Butte’s Finest cruised the neighborhood monitoring bear activity. The officer stopped and grabbed his shotgun, then jumped back in the car and took off down the block. This was bear hunting the modern, urban way.
Habituated bears, town bears, are animals used to being around humans because they eat our trash. Our current crop of dumpster divers are second generation trash bears who know no other means of finding an easy meal. Mama taught them how to do it. These are doomed bears; three such critters have been killed in town this year.
It’s our fault—collectively—that bears are in town. Instead of out cruising for berries or digging up grubs, they tip over dumpsters to get at our discarded barbeque ribs and break into cars for the popcorn we left on the seat. They don’t know how to find food differently, and here they will ultimately meet their demise. No doubt: a garbage bear is a dead bear.
Our community has actually made progress in bear awareness. Most of us now know why bears visit, and we’ve locked up our garbage or otherwise taken steps to discourage bears. Bear Saver trash receptacles, lockable dumpsters and truly inscrutable public trash cans keep bears out. More evolved or not, I still haven’t figured out how to get into some of our trash cans.
I mentioned to a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer that I don’t remember so many significant bear visitations in the past. He told me back in the day we let our dogs run loose which ran the bears out of town. Now we must corral our dogs and keep them on a leash, so bears have free rein.
“What if we let the dogs run loose just for a week or so?” I asked. The local constable rolled his eyes and said, “It’s one of those damned if we do, damned if we don’t situations. If we relax dog laws we’ll start getting more reports of dog bites.”
Roving dogs, marauding bears: life at the head of the draw. The poor bears.
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