Shameless Bears Shake Up Stowe – VTDigger

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the Stowe Reporter on July 25.

A black bear that entered a home on White Gates Lane earlier this month had to be scared away with a warning shot.

According to a police report, Rod Egger’s son and a friend left the sliding glass door of the house open while they went swimming. When they returned, they found the screen door open, the cabinets ripped apart and trash strewn all over the kitchen.

The perpetrator was still on the back deck when they got home. They were yelling and waving their arms in the air, and instead of running away as expected, the bear started walking toward them. It took Egger firing a 12-gauge shotgun round over the bear’s head to finally scare it off.

Egger told police the bear was not afraid and continued to come around the house.

The next day, Eggers’ neighbor Suzanne Szermer in the rural neighborhood on Weeks Hill Road reported that a bear had broken into her home.

When Szermer returned from a bike ride to find trash strewn all over the house, she called for help. Like Egger’s son, she had left the sliding glass door open with a screen door closed. The bear tore through a planter on one side of the house to get through the window before removing the screen door entirely and dumping a gallon of cooking oil all over her oven.

The next day, the bear was spotted on Szermer’s porch again, but had fled before police arrived.

On Wednesday, a bear climbed into the attic of a Stowe home where an empty bird feeder was hanging. Stowe police and Vermont Fish & Wildlife had to lure him off the property. They posted a video on the Vermont Warden Service’s Instagram page with a reminder to pick up trash, remove bird feeders, and compost in a bear-friendly manner.

According to Jaclyn Comeau, a biologist and black bear expert, the black bear population is currently at its highest point in the past five years. There are between 7,000 and 8,500 black bears in Vermont.

Comeau said that Stowe, with its sprawling rural neighborhoods and multimillion-dollar homes that take up large swaths of wilderness, “consistently has the highest reports of bears attempting to access human-made food.”

Reports of bears breaking into garbage cans and dying in traffic accidents, as happened two years ago, are not new. However, this spate of break-ins reflects their growing boldness in seeking out the bounty found in human-inhabited areas.

“On rarer occasions, but it seems to be happening more and more often, we’re getting more reports of some pretty serious property damage and persistent behavior by bears that just won’t give up trying to find these human food sources,” Comeau said.

In the wild, bears become defensive over food sources with other bears. Now that some bears have become so comfortable with humans that they treat them like any other biped, they are increasingly willing to become defensive over a garbage can or other food source.

While the city has invested in bear-resistant dumpsters for some parks and public spaces, there are many households, restaurants and other businesses that do not use bear-resistant dumpsters.

According to Comeau, the best strategy to deter bears is to limit their access to food and garbage as much as possible, such as cleaning up trash and removing bird feeders. At the same time, the city should be as unpleasant as possible for the bear to reside in.

Making as much noise as possible, putting up an electric fence and arming yourself with a paintball gun (which Comeau says is a good way to make a bear uncomfortable, but not lethal) are all ways to ensure the bear doesn’t want to come back.

Police advised Egger to request rubber bullets from a ranger in case of a future incident involving bears. Comeau advised doing so only on a case-by-case basis, however, as rubber bullets can still injure a bear or others if used incorrectly.

Comeau indicated that Stowe is generally a bear-rich area and that people live there normally.

“It’s critical that anyone in the city — on the edge of town, even in a downtown apartment — understands that they’re in bear country, and there’s a good chance a bear will come through your property,” she said.