Click on photos for a closer view.
I was sure glad I hadn't been outside when I heard that sound! As it turned out, this bear was injured and couldn't step on one of its front paws. I felt really bad for it and I called the Nevada Wildlife department right away. While I waited for them to arrive, I was keeping an eye on it and taking photos. Here are a couple showing the bear trying to make its way down the hill without stepping on that paw.
The story gets interesting because when the wildlife guy arrived and loaded his big scary looking tranquilizer gun, I was fascinated. But this dumb guy decided to wait for the other guy who was driving up the mountain with the cage to put the tranquilized bear into. As you see from the photos, that bear was tagged.... so he already knew about the wildlife guys, somehow. We watched the bear sidle off from a vantage point in my driveway, and I kept asking the guy, "Um, shouldn't you do something before it gets away?", and he kept saying he wanted to wait for the cage guy.
He finally realized that the bear was moving away from my house pretty fast, and decided to go after it. Well, I'm so smart (not!!) that I said, "I'm coming with you!" and since he didn't seem to mind, I went along. There we were, hiking through the mountains above my house, and guess what? No bear. I was amazed! There were large areas of manzanita bushes just above the house and to be honest, that had to be where the bear was hiding out. I'd been watching it move along for quite some time already that morning, and it couldn't move very fast at all.
Well, the dumb guy wouldn't give up, and I just wanted to go back to the house, but there I was, out in the forest with this guy who had the tranquilizer gun, and going back to the house alone with no protection when I knew there was a bear nearby would have been silly. So I had to stick near him for an hour or so, until he finally admitted defeat. Was I ever mad! He had his opportunity when the bear was 20 feet away, and he didn't take it.
So the bear melted into the forest and I went home really dirty and hot and sent the wildlife guy off, hoping someone would give him more training before they sent him out again. The cage guy was by now sitting in his truck down the street waiting to put the bear inside, so he went away disappointed, too.
The bear? Who knows? I'm sure he couldn't do much and since it was already November, unless that paw healed enough for him to walk on it and dig a winter hideaway cave, he may have died from lack of food or perhaps made it through the winter to limp around the following spring on a paw that probably didn't work too well. The best hope I have is that somebody else saw him and called the Nevada Wildlife department, and they sent a smarter person out to deal with this bear. Let's hope that's true. :)
