Don’t Feed The Bears
The latest craze of the dingle-brained rich is to feed bears. Wealthy McMansion owners from Aspen to Lake Tahoe have adopted the insane practice of putting food out for black bears in a kind of twisted substitute for human charity.
It is de rigeur to hate the human race, and so the deep-pocketed-and-guilt-ridden set are uncomfortable feeding starving people. Instead they feed bears to quell their feelings of self-loathing. Besides, bears are cute whereas hungry people are homelessly homely.
Until the bears turn on their charity-givers and kill them and eat them. This news is just in from Colorado.
Ouray County woman’s body found; bear attack suspected
By Le Roy Standish, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, August 08, 2009 [here]
A 73-year-old Ouray County woman, possibly killed by bears, was found dead on her property around noon Friday, according to the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
The woman lived about four miles north of Ouray in a quiet, rural subdivision with large-acreage lots. The town is south of Montrose on Colorado Highway 550.
“We haven’t confirmed the cause of death yet, but this woman was found this afternoon around noon and it appeared that she had been mauled by a bear,” said Joe Lewandowski, a spokesman for the DOW.
A Ouray County Sheriff’s Department deputy, investigating the woman’s death, was attacked by a bears.
The deputy shot the bear six times with a shotgun.
“They got here about 12:30, and as they were examining the scene, a bear came out of the woods and the Ouray County sheriff’s deputy shot the bear,” Lewandowski said.
“This bear was shot, but we don’t know if that was the bear that was involved with mauling the woman.”
The woman’s death and the attack of the deputy has triggered a response from the federal government. Wildlife Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been mobilized and is baiting bears onto the property with the intention of killing them, Lewandowski said.
The bears have lost their fear of humans. The woman found dead was frequently seen by neighbors feeding bears on her property, Lewandowski said.
“With this sort of habitation we don’t have any choice, and that is what is really sad. There have been as many as 14 bears that have been observed at the house,” he said.
So the unnamed Ouray County woman was known to feed bears, who were known to congregate on her property, and not her family, her neighbors, nor the authorities did anything about it until she became bear chow herself.
The entire community sat there with their heads in the sand (or somewhere) while an insane lady baited bears into their midst. And now she is dead, others have been attacked, and the bears have to be put down.
Aspen, the ritzy, glitzy ski party town of oil sheiks and other cash-dripping fruitcakes, has hundreds of bear incidents every summer [here]. Bears barge right into homes and attack people in their kitchens. In Aspen if you don’t have steel bars on your windows, the bears will pop in for a snack, which could be you!
And what do the handful of sane residents in Aspen do about the boorish bearish visitors? Absolutely nothing! It’s a real treat for the bling-blings to see a live bear walking down the street, and it’s also a real treat for the locals if a bear eats one the bling-blings. Cheap thrills all around!!!
In Lake Tahoe the fab rich have great empathy for bears. They worry the bears might go hungry out there in the wilderness, so the folks with buckets of money fly baskets of berries by helicopter out into the hills as a kind of charity potluck for the beasties.
The BEAR League of Lake Toorich [here] is as wacky as a swarm of june bugs, but is a favorite eleemosynary outlet for posturing nabobs. Starve the children, feed the bears! And the bears saunter the streets of Lake Tahoe, nudging garbage cans and eating stray pets. They occasionally break and enter homes, where the too rich cower behind expensive settees hoping the bears don’t eat them.
But that’s their problem. Those of us who are not too rich have other concerns. One of which is educating our children in the ways of the world — and that includes the admonition “Don’t Feed the Bears!!!!”
Kids, your loving parents have your best interests at heart. That’s why we teach you not to feed the bears. It’s not a trick we are playing on you for our amusement, or an old wives’ tale. You can actually be harmed by feeding bears. So don’t do it. Also, look both ways before crossing a road, and don’t play with matches.
Sincerely, Mom and Dad
by YPmule
Dementia, eh? That is sad and tragic. But what’s the excuse for the BEAR League of Lake Tahoe? Are they clinically demented, too?
A follow up to the story:
“Autopsy shows bear killed woman who fed animals
By CATHERINE TSAI - Associated Press Writer
Published: 08/10/09
DENVER — A 74-year-old woman who was known for leaving food outside her home for bears - despite several warnings that it was illegal and dangerous to do so - was killed by one of the animals, an autopsy confirmed.
Donna Munson’s body had been partially eaten by a bear or bears when it was found outside her home in Ouray County, in southwestern Colorado, on Friday, but Colorado Division of Wildlife officials couldn’t immediately confirm what caused her death.
County Sheriff Dominic Mattivi said Monday that an autopsy, performed in neighboring Montrose County, showed Munson had scratches and maul marks consistent with being attacked by a bear. She had no signs of heart damage, ruling out the possibility that she died of a heart attack before being attacked, Mattivi said.
State wildlife officers had received “numerous” complaints during the past decade that Munson was feeding bears. But she never was ticketed, partly because wooded hills around her property made it hard to gather evidence to prove it, said division spokesman Tyler Baskfield.
“It’s a well-known fact that people were feeding (bears) at this residence,” Baskfield said.
A letter from the Division of Wildlife to Munson dated April 7, 2008, said officers talked with her at least three times between July 22, 2004 and Sept. 13, 2007, about Colorado laws that prohibit placing feed out for bears.
Baskfield said Munson started ignoring wildlife officers’ calls and stopped letting them on her property, and views from neighbors’ homes were obscured by the foliage.
Authorities aren’t sure whether the bear that killed Munson is still roaming the neighborhood.
Sheriff’s deputies investigating Munson’s death shot a 250-pound bear that aggressively approached them Saturday, and wildlife officers killed a 394-pound bear. A necropsy showed that the larger bear appeared to have been feeding on a human, but Mattivi said that he’s asked officials at the University of Wyoming to confirm that. It’s not known if that’s the bear that killed Munson.
Witnesses have spotted up to 14 bears at a time around Munson’s property over the years, wildlife officials said.
One of Munson’s daughters, Melanie Allum-Milne, told The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction that her mother loved animals and was starting to get dementia.
Baskfield said wildlife lovers may believe they are helping bears by feeding them, but the opposite is true. Feeding bears can teach them to look for food around humans, he said.
It increases the risk that bears could confront humans, enter homes, or be killed by cars as they look for food. “They are no longer wild animals at that point. They’re no longer behaving the way they should,” Baskfield said.
Feeding bears is punishable with a $100 fine for a first offense or a $1,000 fine for a third offense. Baskfield said it’s unclear if that would have deterred Munson.”
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Source: http://www.idahostatesman.com/usnews/story/861680.html