The Bear Is Not Sleeping, or Ursus Americanus is Near

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor

Bear sightings have increased lately in the Empire-Glen Arbor area. During the winter of ‘98 Bonnie Quick grazed a bear with her mini-van as she was headed north one night on Co. Rd. 677 near the Benzie-Leelanau county line, just south of the Empire Airport. Bristles of bear fur were stuck in the front corner of the van where she scraped the startled animal. Now National Park biologists report that tracks indicate a bear is (or at least in April was) on South Manitou Island. Black bears are great swimmers, as Michigan’s Official State Story, The Legend of the Sleeping Bear, suggests. Park experts assume the South Manitou bear, so far not sighted, must have swum over from the mainland. And they assume the bear will, or already has, swum back. Rangers are taking precautions on the island in case the bear stays out there and gets interested in the smells of the campfires soon to be warming cans of Dinty Moore in the island’s three campgrounds. Generally black bears don’t like the smell of humans and avoid contact with them. When they encounter humans, black bears usually run away. But they like to burrow their noses into trashbags, and the dumps near villages in the Upper Peninsula are reliable places for evening bear watching. The vast quadrants of forest in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore could provide ample range for a bear or two, but occassional brushes with humans along the trails is inevitable if bears stick around.
Here are the bear facts on some recent local sightings:
–Last Saturday, May 27, Ray Nargis of rural Empire Township was in the woods between Glen Lake and M-72. “When I went down the trail there was no scat there,” Ray reports, “but when I came back up a couple of hours later I noticed a large deposit of black, gummy, non-dog-like appearing doodoo caacaa excrement filled with green stuff. When I examined it with a stick I ascertained that it was still warm, and I thought ‘Feet, don’t fail me now!’ “ And this isn’t the only evidence of proximate bears lately. There have been some direct bear sightings as well.
–On Saturday, May 6, Sarah Colligan of Long Lake was coming down the east side of Alligator Hill on the trail that drops into Glen Arbor near M-22. “I rounded a corner and heard some stirring,” Sarah says. “It was too loud for a deer, and I looked up to see a 2 or 3 year old healthy gorgeous shiny black bear. The trees were blossoming and the leaves were still just the size of squirrel’s ears, so I could see through the trees clearly. The bear was loping along about 15 meters away from me! I stopped and let it keep going,” Colligan continues, “then I turned around and went back up the trail in case other bears were around so as not to spook it/them nor further spook myself! It was a good-sized but not huge bear, and it was a beautiful thing. It’s nice to know they’re still around here.”
–On the last day of April, a Sunday, Harriet Jones, a counselor at Glen Lake Elementary School, was driving along County Road 616 near the school when she saw something large and black and furry cross the road headed for the school property. Curious, Harriet drove up into the faculty parking lot that parallels the road up behind the pine-tree-covered slope. “There was this bear stopped at the fence that surrounds the elementary school playground, looking in at the bright plastic climbing stuff,” she explains with astonishment. “When the bear couldn’t go through the fence it looked and saw my car, and then it turned around and ran back down the slope through the pine trees and across the road and headed back to the north.”
Maybe, as these three pieces of evidence all occurred on a Saturday or a Sunday, there is a bear who comes here on weekends in a huge S.U.V. just like the auto execs from Detroit or the investors from the Chicago Board of Trade. Maybe it is the South Manitou bear who gets lonely and swims over for the weekend social life around Glen Arbor. Or maybe it is the spirit of Bart, the 1580 lb. movie star grizzly bear who just passed away, looking for another beautiful incarnation as a black bear. Out west the park rangers advise hikers to wear little bells so bears can hear them coming, and to carry cans of pepper spray in case they accidentally startle a grizzly bear. Hikers are also taught to identify bear scat so they know when they are on the fairways of the bears. Black bear (ursus americanus) scat is usually full of berries and vegetable matter, and since they don’t pose much of a threat to humans unless startled with their cubs, making noise and paying attention are the best preventions. Grizzly bears (ursus horribilis) can be dangerous to humans. We don’t have them around here, but apparently their scat is full of little bells and smells like pepper.