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Bear and Man

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Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a cell phone in the woods.

He's not coming to visit.
He’s not coming to visit.

H’lo. Bart here.

I saw this story about the researcher who had his messing-around-with-bears permit yanked because the higher-ups decided he was teaching us to get cozy with humans, which is not a good idea because it puts bears in danger.

I don’t know much about this case, but I can tell you for sure that some bears really don’t get it about people. I’ve heard about campgrounds where dumb bears are actually trying to get into cars. Strangers’ cars! No matter how many times you say “Don’t get into a car if you don’t know the person behind the wheel, and yet there they go, trying to peel off the doors sometimes because there’s a bag of Fritos in the back seat.

Yes, these are cars that belong to people those bears don’t know!

It used to be bears were bears and men were men but with animation and voice overs and Photoshop, sometimes even I’m fooled. There’s even a bear scented cologne. At least that’s what I think is going on at this website, but I don’t read German yet, so I’m not completely sure.

But some bears aren’t sure they’re really bears unless there are people around to take pictures of them and throw popcorn. Then there’s this one bear I read about who tried to break INTO a zoo.

Yes, there’s a lot of confusion out there about boundaries.

So everybody should know bears are wild animals. We aren’t pets and we’re not cartoon characters and we don’t think in complete sentences or talk like lummoxes or act like hairy versions of your best friends.

And I know you’re thinking that I pretty much do all those things I just mentioned. But that doesn’t mean I’m dangerously “habituated” to humans – far from it! I’ve learned to be cautious from dealing with people online, where everyone feels free to be their worst possible self. Thanks to that, I’m the most suspicious bear you’ve ever met.

And we’ve never met! Let’s keep it that way!

Your remote pal,
Bart

I agree that Bart is the wrong messenger for the Bears Aren’t People Campaign. But asking a normal bear to make the case for less bear-human interaction would be just plain scary.

Name an animal (or person) you’d like to keep at arms’ length, and why.

37 thoughts on “Bear and Man”

  1. Good morning. There certainly are lots of wild animals that I would not want too close to me. If I had to pick one to put at the top of list of those to stay away from, it would be a tiger. A grizzly bear would be a close second. These animals could finish me off very quickly. Actually I I don’t want to be too close to any animal with shape teeth unless it is very small and I would even use some care with those small ones. I was once foolish enough to pick up a vole and it bit me.

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  2. i know lynn rogers has been fighting with the dnr for years. he is obviously a very unique individual and has a hard time dealing with all the hoops the dnr asks him to jump through. i think the state should hire someone at the dnr to fill out rogers paperwork for him the way they’d lkek. it would be good research for them and an invaluable legacy when lynn is done with his work. how much would you pay a guy to do what he does? i wrote a letter to dayton asking him to stand up for lynn. i feel so angry that a spat between the dnr and an eccentric bear man can result in the dnr flexing their muscles to end his work. shame on you dnr.
    i would like to keep people in the dnr position of power not only at arms length form me. ut them in an office with a book of rules and regulations and tell them to protect our natural resources from there. here is a copy of the letter i sent to dayton in case you want to copy it and put some capital letters in there.

    please intercede and tell the dnr to leave lynn rogers alone. the gift on lynn rogers can not be overlooked and the fact he is difficult to work with need to be dealt with. you couldnt pay someone to do what he does and the dnr getting upset at his not playing by their rules need to be reigned in. http://www.startribune.com/local/213574481.html

    here is the link to send dayton an email.

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      2. I am really not sure about Lynn Rodgers. I think I need to know more. It seems to me that he could be manipulating bears by taming them and that this isn’t a good way to study wild bears. Perhaps this isn’t what he is doing or perhaps it is okay for him to this.

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  3. i think about folks like jeffrey dahmer every now and again. i once heard a story about a guy wanting to rent a house out in la and the house had squatters who would not leave. he went to look at the propery and decided against the move because of the vibes the squatters who were there gave off. just pure evil. it turned out to be the charlie manson cult and they did their murders within a year or so of that visit. it gives me the creeps to think about the twisted screwed up people wo are out there without my being aware of it. i dont dwell on it but it does pop up every now and agian. my wife on the other hand had a bit more toruble putting it out of her mind after her brothers best friend was the last kid killed by john wayne gacy. he was picked up on the corner 2 blocks from their house at the neighborhood hangout where everyone hung out every day.
    when i googled john wayne gacy the bottom right corner had the list, dahmer, gien, ted bundy richard ramiriz, charlie manson.
    makes the dnr seem small but its all relative isnt it. sickos who want their way at the expense of others. i would like to put in an envelope and send them off like the bad guys in the superman movie off into space in a spinning cube where they could be with their own evel selves until they were done. or at least move them to a different cubicle a little further away.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I like tim’s strategy of hiring someone to deal with the DNR for Lynn Rogers–that is how I think. I cannot fill out a form for love nor money, so I have hired several people to do that as part of their jobs. The DNR’s research is valuable, as is Lynn Roger’s knowledge of bears. Surely there is a middle ground here.

    Meanwhile, to the wild animals. REcently at the Three Rivers Dog Park near my town a bald eagle flew by my shoulder while hunting the tiny dogs in the park–that was scary and fascinating. I would prefer more distance from eagles and the tiny pets. Our local bobcat is a bit intimidating, too, given the mess it left on our neighbor’s front yard. Truly offal. Years ago on a S. Dakota vacation we came quite close to a buffalo with a sprig of evergreen wedged between its ear and horn. A buffalo that close is a bit large for my taste. On Isle Royal I stepped out of the “Lady’s Outhouse” into the path of a moose which was standing right there–also quite large. I love the wild animals, but I would prefer to enjoy any of them at a distance. They are wild.

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    1. moose are something. had a campsite issue with a mother and her babies on two seperate vacations and was informed after the first time to be certain i would be properly afraid the second time

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  5. The recent treatment of Lynn Rogers is really troublesome for me. I consider Lynn a friend. We met in the 1980s and have been close since then. I am also aware of the way the DNR and USFWS combined in a criminal conspiracy to smear Lynn’s reputation. It seems possible that something like that has happened again.

    And yet I wonder. I think there are many in the DNR who wanted Lynn to behave a little more conventionally. I have some misgivings about all the bears he befriends. In the end I don’t feel I know enough about the inside story here to let me take a strong position on either side. Lynn is a wonderful and highly unusual guy who has done a lot of great things but sometimes seems to lack judgment.

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  6. Hmm. I like to keep my distance from bison and I would be very alarmed to encounter a mountain lion. Bison can be very aggressive and mountain lions, well, they could eat me. Both are possibilities out here. I like to avoid politically ultraconservative people, since I don’t know what on earth to say to them and always get the feeling they secretly despise me. We have some really offensive regular contributors to the letters to the editor of the local paper who I would never want to meet.

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    1. We get some of those crazy letters to the editor here in our local paper. I think the papers should consider not publishing at least some of them. They published a letter here giving false information that was harmful. They didn’t seem to realize that the letter they published was completely unethical as well as being false and harmful.

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  7. Morning all. I’m having trouble narrowing it down, but I think I’ll have to go with polar bears. As much as I love to look at them, I’m thinking that being within arm’s reach would be extremely detrimental to my health.

    I love this clip… clearly the polar bear is just trying to get to the chewy center of the nougat..

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    1. “… the chewy center of the nougat…” Cracked me up. 🙂

      Spiders; I just want spiders to stay far away from me. Especially the fat, brown ones that live in the dusty corners of my barn.
      I just gave myself the shivers typing that!

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    2. I forgot about polar bears. They look to me like totally scary beast on par with tigers and grizzlies.

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  8. In this case I’ll name an entity. Facebook. When our Internet was down after the storms, I got enough of a break to get un-addicted (unless I go back), so I’m taking a vacation from FB for the time being. It was taking up WAY too much of my time!

    Will have to read later – have a great day, Babooners.

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  9. OT – Book Club Baboons. We need to move our next meeting up an hour or so. 1 p.m. Sunday, July 21 at my house (right?)

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  10. Being an Extreme Introvert, there are tons of people I would like to keep at arms’ length – although, actually that wouldn’t be far enough away. I’m thinking of the sort of friend I seem to collect: the kind that if I have friends like that, I don’t need enemies (none of these “friends” are Baboons). I should not name names here, One of them is the person I’ve mentioned here before who not only likes to tell me what to plant in the garden, but where to plant it (that is just one small example of the sort of thing she does). There is another person that I’m hoping I can permanently put at very, very long arms’ length sometime in the next year or so, but this is not the place to name his name.

    As for animals – I will stick with the urban animals that have been a Problem in my neighborhood: Squirrels and Rats. I could come up with a few stories about those…but I better write up a guest post instead of telling the story now.

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  13. I didn’t answer the question with my first comment. When I was a kid we saw all kinds of film of scary animals, like lions, moray eels, bears and so forth. Almost ALL animals were presented in sensational, antagonistic ways. Then in the 1960s and 1970s and later we all saw film that presented “dangerous” animals in a sympathetic light. The scary films I saw as a kid were distorted, and so are the films that suggest all kinds of animals are our friends and would make good pets.

    I don’t fear any animal except other human beings, but I have a lot of healthy respect for large predators. And I want to emphasize that word “respect.” Wild animals are wild. They aren’t pets and shouldn’t be, and when people try to make pets of them the outcome is almost always tragic.

    There is no better example of this than the animal I probably know best: the gray wolf. I’ve known of three people–all of them intelligent and compassionate people–who were so fascinated by wolves that they took a wolf (or wolves) as a pet. In each case, the wolf died and the person responsible was left with enormous guilt for having violated the basic respect we all owe to wild things. Wild things are meant to be wild. People who have to make pets of them either have a financial reason for doing it or are wounded psychologically. When people try to make pets of wolves they almost always end up in so much trouble they try to give the animal away. There are shelters all over the US filled with discarded wolves or wolf-dog crosses that failed to be satisfying pets.

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    1. Steve – I completely agree. Last summer Teenager and I visited the Wildlife Sanctuary outside of Denver. They have many many animals, particularly tigers, who started out as pets and then had to be given up when they got bigger and more dangerous. I am nonplussed.. .it seems pretty clear that the cute little striped “kitty” won’t stay little for too long. What are people thinking???

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      2. I’m pretty certain that being within arm’s reach of certain animals, tigers and bears and wolves to mention a few, would quickly turn my healthy respect into abject fear.

        Once while hiking high in the Grand Tetons, i rounded a sharp curve on a narrow path and found myself face to face with a huge white mountain goat and her two offspring. I couldn’t pass her without getting between her and her young, so I just stood still, five or six hikers behind me wondering why I had stopped. While I hadn’t heard any stories about people being attacked by mountain goats, I wasn’t sure how exactly to convey to that wild animal that I intended them no harm. Any wild animal with young can be tricky if encountered unexpectedly, and I was way too close for comfort, close enough to touch. Luckily she decided, after a tense minute or two, to move on up the mountain with her kids. As elegant and sure-footed as they were on that steep slope, there’s no doubt in my mind that the encounter could easily have turned ugly. I was thrilled to have chanced upon them, but quite relieved that the mama goat didn’t see me as enough of a threat to challenge me an any way. I can’t imagine what it would be like to unexpectedly have a chance encounter with a bear.

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