Bearing up (again) in Sisters

On Tuesday night, February 23, Gayle Fettis-Gerard's dogs started barking. The next morning she found her garbage cans overturned in the front yard, with flour all over the driveway and a very large bear paw print on the outside wall of the garage.

Looking at the paw print and the overturned garbage cans, she immediately thought a bear was in the neighborhood, probably looking for food after waking from its long winter sleep - and that worried her.

Before doing anything else, Gayle first rolled her garbage cans into the garage, thereby removing any temptation the bear may have had to stick around. Then, she contacted the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office (DCSO) and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wildlife biologist Steven George in Bend.

DCSO responded by sending around an extra patrol during the night, and George's response was, "If you see it again, let us know."

The next day Gayle went out and found the bear wasn't giving up that easy; even though she didn't actually see it, she discovered it had turned over her recycling containers.

Into the garage went the recycling bins to join her garbage cans. However, a hungry bear doesn't give up very easily, and Gayle noticed it had tried to chew and claw its way into her garage, so she changed venues and put the containers in her fortress-like well-house. She also took down her bird feeder.

The next day she went out again, looking around for any sign the bear was still in the neighborhood, and sure enough, she found where it had been feeding on pine cones littering her fenced-in yard. Then, the most obvious sign of all, bear tracks in the snow showing six-inch claws, and a huge pile of smelly bear scat nearby, with obvious signs of bird-seed in it.

Bear experts say that not leaving any food around is the prudent thing to do. The wandering bear left the neighborhood, perhaps to go out into the winter deer range bordering Sisters.

However, last Wednesday Fettis-Gerard called The Nugget office and said, "Sunday night the dogs got to barking again and when I looked out the upstairs window I did get a glimpse of a large, black object running off into the woods."