It all started out as an innocent pun for my wife and I. There was a bear spotted on Bear Ridge Road. We thought that was kind of funny. Besides, how do people think Bear Ridge Road got its name? Then we saw the pictures of a bear somewhere crashed out on a guy’s hammock in his backyard. My thought was: “Who doesn’t love lying in a hammock? I know that I love it.”

It was all fun and games until people started seriously talking about killing the bears on sight. There have been bears spotted strolling in front of schools and bears caught going through bird feeders in people’s backyards. The authorities keep capturing the bears and taking them back into the woods, but the bears keep coming back. The next logical step has to be to kill them, right?

The arrogance of man is believing that he controls nature, instead of the other way around. All of you sport hunters who love to watch things die can put your guns away and everyone can just relax. Why can’t mankind live in harmony with nature? Why must everything that appears to be a threat die?

First of all, it isn’t the bears’ fault that they keep popping up at our schools and in our backyards. The bears are here for the same reason that we keep seeing deer in our streets and raccoons in our garbage – we are overdeveloping the forests and the animals have no place else to go. The geese near Geico live and play freely among the traffic. It is reassuring to see cars stopped for five minutes as a mama goose and her babies cross the road. But that whole complex is growing and the geese won’t have anywhere to go after a while. Then what?

Man needs nature to survive. We need bees to carry the pollen that keeps the plants growing that supply oxygen, and we need creepy, ugly bats to keep the mosquito population under control. I’m not sure why we need the bears, I just know that they were here first. The Native Americans can teach us a great deal if we would just listen to them. They know how to live in harmony with nature and that is a skill that we need to acquire.

First of all, the bears are not wandering into your backyards to kill you or your pets. They are wandering into your backyards because you either have food there (a bird feeder) or a cozy way to crash and watch the world go by (hammock). The last thing the bear cares about, or is interested in, is you.

I do understand the need to get the bears away from schools. School children think everything is a pet and bears are not pets. Bears are not dangerous until you either startle, corner, or provoke them. These black bears we have been seeing are about as docile as nature’s creatures get; until you piss them off. That is when they turn into the ravenous monsters that these new housing developments want you to believe they are.

Last summer, Lockport had two geese that lived downtown for a brief period of time. After a couple of weeks, it was just one goose that would wander Main Street. A few weeks later, that one goose stopped showing up. Did they leave to go to a more secluded spot? I sure hope so. I would hate to think that some inconsiderate human did something stupid to a defenseless animal.

Bears are far from defenseless animals. Even baby black bears have the strength, claws, and teeth to cause a lot of damage. But the bears we are seeing are not interested in dealing with humans. They are just trying to find new places to wander because we keep building housing developments on their old turf.

The next time you see a bear, just call the animal control authorities and they will take the bear back into the wild. There is no reason to go all Annie Oakley on the bear and blow its head off. You are not a hero for protecting your family; you’re an idiot for killing a passive animal.

Just remember that we are making the wild smaller and smaller. As long as we keep building luxury condos in areas where bears live, we will have to deal with them in our backyards. Instead of acting like scared children, maybe we should act like adults and realize that the bears need space too.

Nick Oliver is an animal lover and has never come face to face with a bear. His column appears every Wednesday and is appreciated by the creatures of the wild. Don’t shoot the bears; just snap a picture and let animal control do their thing.

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