Bears sighted in Sisters

"Look! Is that a bear?!" a woman at Indian Ford exclaimed one morning recently while looking out her kitchen window.

Her husband ran to the window. "You're right, it is a bear," he shouted, "and look, it has a cub with it!"

Other bear-sightings around Sisters, and indeed, right in the industrial park and at the elementary school, have left no doubt that Sisters has been attracting more than the average tourist over the last several weeks.

Black bears are large animals that come in cinnamon to jet-black fur, and some males will tip the scales at over 500 pounds. People who ride their horses along mountain trails have seen "bear trees," with claw marks well over eight feet above the ground.

This is one way a bear will mark his or her territory, and get a meal of tree bark at the same time.

Almost all of the estimated 25,000 black bears -- or "itchwoots," as they're known in the Chinook jargon -- found in Oregon, left to live their lives as they would like to, are little to no problem to man and his pursuits.

Even though they're placed in the biological classification of carnivores, bears are in reality omnivores -- like humans. While roots, fruits, nuts, and several species of grasses are the normal food of black bears, they wouldn't pass up a fawn, lamb, or a pig if they had the chance.

Black bears commonly sleep away the winter. To those who burn wood, shovel snow, put on tire chains and go about shivering when the temperature drops to 31 below, that sounds wonderful.

But a bear can't just crawl into any old hollow log or lava cave and go to sleep without preparing itself first -- like eating, and eating, and eating. Perhaps the bears visiting Sisters may have drawn by the scent of food cooking for the jazz festival.

It takes a lot of fat in bears' bodies to get them through a long, Central Oregon winter. Like most animals that hibernate, bears also go into a deep sleep; breathing and heartbeat slows to the minimum. Cubs are often born during hibernation without the mother bear realizing it.

But like bats, who likewise sleep through the winter, bears can also be awakened without too much trouble. So if you happen to come across a sleeping bear while you're cross-country skiing, or prowling through a cave, be polite.

Waking up 500 pounds of grouchy bear in the middle of winter could be hazardous.

Unfortunately, black bears won't pass up any scrap of food left behind by man. Sometimes the food isn't "garbage." Campfire stories about black bears getting into camping gear, breaking open ice chests, tearing up tents and backpacks, ripping cars apart for food, and running people up trees are absolutely true.

A black bear, intent on chasing -- or being chased -- can outrun a horse in the short haul. Bears have five toes on each paw, armed with formidable claws, and can rip logs apart with ease. As a carnivore they also have very large teeth and powerful jaws. And an adult black bear can scamper up a tree faster than a human.

Couple all those physical attributes with the fact that bears have lousy eyesight, a very keen sense of smell and are sometimes grouchy, and you have a wild animal that could do a lot of damage to man and beast.

The tales about female bears (called sows) reacting to a threat to their cubs are probably also true. Getting between a sow and her cub would be very much like standing between two trains about to have a head-on collision. No one's going to come it of it very well.

The serious injuries that have resulted because of people getting too close to bears, and visa-versa, have resulted in a "stay away, keep safe" policy in all the national parks. It is now illegal, as well as dangerous, to feed bears in any of our parks. It would be just plain stupid to try it in Sisters.

If you're one of the people in the Sisters area who have a black bear wandering through your back yard, under your office window or checking the trash bin at school, enjoy the experience. But do everything you can to avoid any personal contact.

(Editor's note: The bear spotted in Sisters was likely killed last week by an automobile on Highway 126 about two miles east of town.)