Lions and snakes and bears, oh my

While picking up a rental car in Dayton, Ohio last week, in typical small-talk conversation with the guy at the counter, I say I’m from Colorado.
“Colorado? Aren’t there bears and mountain lions out there?” he asked incredulously. “How can you live out there? It’s dangerous man. Have you seen them?”
“Dude, you live in Dayton. And yeah, I saw a bear wandering between my house and the neighbor’s house last night. I’ve never seen a mountain lion and the bears are sort of like mosquitoes that you can shoo away.”
But I’m having second thoughts on that. In what’s turning into some sort of Alfred Hitchcock horror movie, the bears are getting more and more brazen and that means more and more dangerous.
Early this week, a bear didn’t just wander into a house with an open door. It broke in through a bolted, locked door. It growled at the owners of the home. He went to the freezer and helped himself to food.
According to the local marshals, there have been 25 or 30 reports of bears going into homes this past month or so. Last summer the bears would break into cars, but this summer they are dangerously breaking into homes. Cue the horror movie music.
Are the bear-resistant trashcans making the bears take a more aggressive stance and look for food where they know it is hidden… in your freezer? That is not good.
And apparently some of the smarter bruins have figured out that the $300 bear-resistant trashcans will pop open like a shaken can of Coca-Cola if they turn it on its side and jump on it. Yummy. A squeezable tube of trash and a feast.
The cops say that one resident said the next time a bear comes into his house, he’ll use his high-powered rifle to shoot the intruder. Who would blame him, but is shooting high-powered rifles in town a good idea?
And then the marshals received a report of a mountain lion sighting in the town of Crested Butte Monday morning. It was spotted near the Three Ladies Park in the northwest side of town.
And there was a message on my phone from a mountain biker who swears she spotted a rattlesnake while biking Strand Hill by the Canal trail.
Jeez. Are the August monsoons turning Crested Butte into the Noah’s Ark of the West Elks for animals with big teeth? Horror movie material?
Maybe it is time to let the dogs loose. Local old and mid-timers say the bears weren’t a problem in town until the leash law went into effect. The dogs were Crested Butte’s primitive version of Mary Shannon Baim’s idea for a “bear patrol” to scare off the bears, outlined in a letter to the editor last week. Maybe the leash law is rescinded from June to October from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m. I don’t think the marshals will like that idea so it is probably out of the question. When I mentioned it to chief marshal Tom Martin he pointed out that the bear trap actually has caught a couple of K-9s “so the dogs are still out there roaming,” he observed.

The area Colorado Division of Wildlife guys got together with the marshals Monday afternoon and agreed there is a real problem with probably three bears in town. They are problem bears and their actions are getting dangerous.
J Wenum of the DOW says it is sort of back-to-school time and both the bears and the people need to be re-educated and that is happening. The trash regulations are huge and working, he says. But, August is apparently the busiest month of the year for bears as they eat and eat and eat, preparing for the long winter hibernation. In Crested Butte, September can be a problem as well.
Maybe it’s not really time to let the dogs out. But it is certainly the time to stay ultra-aware that there are big animals looking for ways to eat the easy food in your neighborhood, and that can lead to a dangerous situation.
We live in a place populated by bears and mountain lions and apparently the odd rattlesnake. So treat the situation seriously and take the proper precautions (lock your doors and close your windows, move the dog food and the bird feeders) and understand that might still not be enough to avoid a hungry bear.
Still, you have to admit for most of us… it probably beats moving to Dayton. Cue the horror movie music.