My wife, Betsy’s, phone range at 6:30 am this past Labor Day. Our neighbor, David, across the street called to say that he’d seen a family of bears heading into our back yard. Betsy immediately rousted me and sent me outside to find the bears. I walked out our back door and looked around. No bears. What’s this all about, I wondered. Back inside, I started to prepare breakfast. Glancing out our kitchen window, I didn’t see anything unusual in our back yard. But unusual noises, similar to those made by squirrels running across the roof, prompted me to look up through the skylight. There was mama bear lying in a crotch in our green ash tree close to our house in our back yard. Mama bear looked down at me. I craned my neck to get a wider view and spotted two cubs, one black and one brown, walking along horizontal branches in the ash tree above mama bear. Betsy came over to view the bears. David mentioned that he saw three cubs walk toward our back yard. I’m not sure why but it took us a while to spot the third cub, a black version.
Mama bear’s fore legs and hind legs dangled below the tree limb on which she lay. She seemed to be completely relaxed. Meanwhile the cubs continued to scamper along limbs perhaps 6 inches in diameter. The cubs had no difficulty climbing over small branches protruding from the main limbs. Perhaps the cub’s paws have non-slip surfaces that allow them, along with their claws, to move gracefully around the canopy of the tree.
Betsy and I agreed that we would not contact the City of Boulder animal control folks, because the bears weren’t causing any problems. Soon David and his wife, Jennifer, arrived to check on the bears. They concurred in our decision to leave the bears alone, at least for the time being. Somehow news of the bears spread and other neighbors arrived to see the bears through our kitchen window and skylight or through my office window with a full view of our back yard. Lots of photos and videos featuring the bears’ antics.
At length, the cubs appeared to tire of climbing in the ash tree. They descended and investigated our back yard. One of the black cubs, the smallest of the three, appeared to have a problem with his or her paws—they slipped on the grass in the yard. The larger cubs wrestled with each other, while the smaller cub chewed on an old mule deer skull and antlers that lay beside the huge American elm at the back of our lot.
Coincidentally, Betsy and I were caring our daughter’s dog, Bee, for the day. Needless to say, the aroma of the bears led Bee to bark and carry on. At one point, one the larger cubs investigated the bird bath hanging from a stand in the yard. This bear also slapped at the empty humming bird feeder hanging next to the bird bath. I didn’t want the bear to break the hummingbird feeder so I opened the back door. When the cubs heard the door open, the quickly climbed the ash tree. Alas, Bee shot into the back yard and started barking at the bears in the tree. I glanced up at mama bear who blessedly maintained her relaxed posture. I ran outside to collar Bee, who ran into our vegetable garden and stopped. She let me grab her collar, and we exited the back yard through a gate. I led Bee to our front door and into our house. The bears were still in the ash tree so I zipped outside, quickly retrieved the hummingbird feeder, and went back inside our house.
The cubs gathered around mama bear in the ash tree. Their behavior suggested that they wanted to nurse, but mama bear’s position on the tree limb made nursing difficult. Mama and the cubs climbed down, inspected our back yard (including our vegetable garden). Mama deposited a large pile of poop, and repaired to a secluded corner of our lot. The cubs followed. They spent about 15 minutes in a tight group evidently nursing. That done, the bears spent more time inspecting the back yard. The bears ambled to the more secluded corner of our yard behind the tool shed, presumably for more nursing.
Shortly after noon, the bears climbed over our side yard fence and checked out our neighbor’s back yard to the north. The bears inspected the accommodations then climbed over the fence into the next neighbor’s yard where they apparently spent the night.
Interestingly, the bears did not cause us any problems. Later, our daughter, Helen arrived and we cleaned up seven piles of bear poop. Fortunately, the bears didn’t tear up our vegetable garden or other parts of our back yard. The two larger cubs nibbled on our Oregon grape shrubs but showed little interest in the fruits. Likewise, the bears nibbled on our grapes but didn’t eat many of them. From what I heard, the bears didn’t cause any problems elsewhere in our neighborhood. Thank you, bears, for a memorable Labor Day.
