Black bear stops by for Thanksgiving

Fred Ast and his family returned to Sisters on Friday from celebrating Thanksgiving in Roseburg with Fred's parents. Of course, there were left-overs and they brought some turkey home.

They left the back end of their Honda open.

At about 1:30 a.m. their dog barked. Fred didn't think much of it. Their dog is always treeing raccoons.

But at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Fred stepped out his front door and there, right off his porch, about 20 feet up a tree, was a reasonably large black bear. At least 200 lbs. of black bear.

Fred called the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, but ODF&W was closed on the weekend. He called the Oregon State Police, which said they would send someone out. But a trooper never arrived.

"I finally got it quiet enough last night. Right during the snowfall, the bear departed," Ast said on Sunday. "This morning the snow covered up all signs of him having been here."

Well, maybe.

Ast and his son walked down to where he thought the bear would have gone, about 250 yards from their home near the Camp Polk cemetery. A recently built fence showed signs of where a deer may have gotten entangled. There were signs of a struggle. The heavy-gauge wire had been torn.

"Not far from there, a deer carcass had been buried. It was fresh. The snow hadn't covered it up, probably because there was still a lot of heat from the deer,"said Ast.

Ast thought the bear may have come upon the entangled deer, ripped the deer out of the fence, had a meal and buried the leftovers.

It was nature's own Thanksgiving meal, which, after 20 hours or so in a tree, the bear richly deserved.

According to naturalist Jim Anderson, stashing the leftovers is characteristic of bears. He said that, while they don't bury a carcass completely, they often will scrape debris over it to keep it hidden.