Bears Can Climb Ladders!
By Pam Blackman
My husband and I grew up in England. This was about a thousand years after the last native bear ‘moved’ from England, or at least was seen in Britain. So we had no experience with bears.
In the early seventies we moved to Anmore. At the time we were part of an unorganized, (some said disorganized) territory, part of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Anmore is now a village but that is another story. This story is about a bear.
We used to have bird feeders on the railing of our sundeck but the bears found them and destroyed them. We did not mind having the bears around, they happily walked along the sundeck railing, but they were getting a bit too close, too often. So we had to move the feeders. We now hang them from the upstairs bathroom window so that they are in front of our kitchen window. Below the kitchen is the part of the basement which is above ground, which means the feeders are about 15 feet above ground.
One day we had the ladder up to the kitchen window in order to clean it. You know how it is when you clean a window, as soon as you put things away you see a spot you missed. So we had left it there and then forgot it when we went out that evening.
On our return we found the bird feeder on the ground broken. On the kitchen window was a muddy paw print from a bear. We realized that the bear had climbed the ladder and rested one paw on the window while using the other paw to knock down the birdfeeder. We wondered how we would have reacted if we had entered the kitchen to find a bear looking straight at us through the window!
We put the ladder on the ground intending to clean off the paw print later. But before we could do that some local kids found the ladder, put it up to another window and came into the house. The alarm went off and fortunately scared them off before they could take anything or do any damage.
When the police came to investigate the break-in and dusted for prints from the kids, we showed them the paw print on the window and asked if they could dust that but they said they had nothing to compare it with!
Bears have very good long memories and we still sometimes find paw prints on the door of our basement which is directly below the bird feeder. But we now know not to leave ladders against the house as bears can climb them.
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