On the Hunt in the Chicken Pen
In the middle of June I was home with strep throat, strep as an adult is not the ice cream picnic it is as a child, but I digress. I was lying in bed and heard our chickens get all excited. The chickens have a flock warning sound that makes all the other chickens run inside or under trees. Usually it is the fledgling hawks learning to hunt, so normally I will let my dogs out to run the perimeter of the chicken run to keep the hawks from diving bombing and taking away a chicken or better yet, kill one and then sit in the pen and slowly pluck it. This process sounds so macabre but it is part of nature and living in a forest area one of the inevitable dangers when you raise poultry. I was thinking the dogs had done their job now I could go back to sleep, the phone rings it is the neighbor saying there is a bear up a tree with a chicken.
I quickly jump up and go to see, stopping to grab the phone to call my husband we call with exciting wildlife reports. His first comment was, “I hope it is not one of my favorites.”
Sure enough, up a tree with three big dogs at the base looking up is the cutest baby bear you have ever seen, just like a teddy bear. He was the size of a cocker spaniel and just observing the scene below. I called in all the dogs and the little guy ran down the tree and into the woods… My son and I were checking things out when we noticed a half grown chick on the outside of the pen (of course it was one of the favorites) but the thankfully it was wobbly but alive. We put it in our special pen where we can closely monitor him. He has a cut on his back and had fallen about 15 feet from the tree but amazingly seemed ok.
We all went in and relaxed and an hour later our little friend was back in the run, this time all the chickens were safe in their chicken house. When he saw
Up in the Tree
us, he again ran off through the woods. I called the Division of Wildlife to report him. The story in our neighborhood was that two cubs had been wandering around without their mother, no one had seen her at all and there were many sightings of the cubs. One of the cubs a few weeks earlier had been trapped and sent to a rehabilitation ranch because he was very underfed and dehydrated, but they could not catch the second cub. We had seen him about that time and unlike his sibling he looked very healthy his coat looked good he had weight on him and he was dining on dandelions and was very car smart. The division of wildlife had been looking for him because they know that if these little guys raise themselves they develop very bad habits, like eating chickens and trash, and then they become the problem bears. If they get them to a rehab they learn what they are supposed to eat and they don’t get used to humans. Because as cubs they are so cute everyone takes their pictures and do things to draw them in to get to see them, and then they create a problem bear.
Part 2 of 2 published Sept. 6th!
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