Peter Fimrite’s alarming aricle about Tahoe Bears Gone Wild triggered my skepticism meter even before I heard from our friends in Kings Beach. There are several telltale signs of hyperbole in the article, which I’ve come to recognize after years of reading countless “Beavers Blamed for Another Bank Failure” articles. Let’s look at them together, shall we?
Maybe we should start with the title. “Black Bears Wreaking Havoc on Tahoe Area.” Not exactly subtle. Clearly the problem with Tahoe isn’t unfettered development encroaching on animal habitat and hardscape causing acres of erosion down the mountain side. The problem is BEARS!!! Wreaking Havoc! Well, often the reporter doesn’t choose the headline, so we can’t blame Pete for that. Let’s keep reading.
Black bears, normally shy around humans, have been smashing windows, yanking doors off their hinges and entering homes and businesses in the Lake Tahoe area like never before, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.
Smashing windows! Yanking doors off their hinges! Is this bear gang violence? (Has there been tagging? Is that what that bear was doing hanging over the bridge?) Of course bears have always yanked doors off their hinges and smashed windows to get things they really want. They’re BEARS after all. You know there used to be people in Tahoe that understood that. They were accustomed to dealing with bears. Now if you walked down the condo’d streets and canals you would see the very same neighbors you’d recognize from your home in the Bay Area. 62 depradation permits? Nice to know Fish & Game still has a purpose. It occurs to me that its possible the number of blood thirsty bears hasn’t gone up, Pete. But the number of bear-stupid humans who leave food and ice chests and candy wrappers out, has.
Hunter said the brute tore a window out of the restaurant on Nov. 11 and raided the kitchen, gobbled a 3-gallon tub of spumoni ice cream and sampled the salami, ravioli and tortellini before sacking out in a wine box in the kitchen. He found the snoring beast the next morning and, with help from his son and an expert from the Bear Education Aversion Response, or BEAR League, splashed ammonia on the hairy slob’s face and shooed him out.
Brute? Hairy Slob? Are we talking about an animal break-in or a frat party? Well I’m sure after the reporter exhausts his supply of perjorative labels he’ll get down to the real story. Maybe he’ll talk about the increase in development in the Tahoe area, or how, when the economy tanked, newly developed units got abandoned and allowed more animal traffic. Maybe he’ll talk about since we humans know this, we’re responsible for keeping our supplies locked up and out of sight. We need to make our trash bear-proof. We need to keep from attracting these animals into our backyards and restaurants.
These skills take education and community response to develop, so enter the program described later in the article “BEAR” (Bear Education Aversion Response) Guess who’s on the BEAR team? The husband of our beaver-saving friends in Kings Beach. Guess who the reporter didn’t talk to? I’ll give you a hint, here’s his response to the article.
This account is completely wrong. I was the volunteer who originally showed up to chase the bear out of Bacchi’s restaurant. No ammonia was thrown on anyone’s face – I tossed about 1/4 cup of ammonia on the floor near where the bear was lying down. He exited, and I chased him down the hall and outside across the meadow and into the woods. I shot him with a paintball gun to even keep him moving. This was a very old, very sleepy and slow bear, well known by neighbors for years, and never aggressive. As volunteers for the BEAR League, we advised the owners of several precautions to take, including securing their garbage (their dumpster bin was NOT locked) and securing old, loose windows. This was 10 days before the bear was shot, plenty of time to have done something. Mr. Hunter’s account also clearly shows he was blocking the bear’s exit path – ‘the bear realized it was a dead end and turned back toward me’ – which is the only reason a bear would come toward someone, other than the short ‘bluff’ that Mr. Hunter also described. Nobody was attacked, but someone obviously likes the undeserved attention. Your reporter should have known better than to repeat such hyperbole without checking the facts. Ted Guzzi
So let’s get this straight: you’ve written an article that blames the animals for exaggerated human fears, thus creating more human fears so that more animals can be blamed in the future. The article fails not only to discuss the responsible options this man neglected to exercise, but it goes on to describe a rampant increase in the number of bears roaming about the state without mentioning the rampant increase of humans.
“He came around that table and just charged me,” Hunter said. “He covered about 30 feet in three bounds. I knew bears were fast, but this was the fastest thing I’d ever seen in my life. I had no time to get the shotgun around. It was the proverbial life flashes before your eyes kind of thing.” Miraculously, Hunter said, the bear turned away at the last second. “He was between these two tables 6 or 7 feet away when he realized he was trapped there and he reared up again and turned back toward me,” Hunter said. “I wasn’t going to let him get close to me. That’s when I shot him.”
What was the man’s name again? The innocent victim who was forced to shoot the bear. I won’t say it. It’s just too easy. But tell me the truth, Pete, have you been watching a little too much Stephen Colbert lately?)
Mary also wrote the chronicle. Let’s see what she has to say,
I am a 39 year resident of Lake Tahoe. What happened at Bacchi’s is tragic. This man was advised over and over to secure his property and make his garbage inaccessible, but instead he ignored the experts advice and shot this old bear that was known and not feared by the neighborhood. Now his photo is on the front page of your paper as if he is some hero that narrowly escaped with his life. In addition, your story and the story in our local paper, the Sierra Sun, are only vaguely similar. Is the sensationalism for the sake of circulation or dinner counts? Shame on you.
Well, what Tahoe residents read the SF chronicle anyway? Oh, right. The flatlanders who come up for Christmas and the weekend ski and wish it was more like the Bay Area. They’ll get together with Fish & Game and make sure the hunting regulations are changed for bears in the state. I can see it coming. So can Mary. She’s organizing a candelight vigil at the restaurant and calling the media to invite them. I just had one piece of advice.
Invite children, and have everyone bring their Teddy Bear.
