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> Black bear still wandering area
Southsider2k12
post Jul 2 2015, 02:43 PM
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http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/notoroious-...n-city/33797760

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MICHIGAN CITY -

Shaniqua Lambert watched with excitement and shock as a very healthy looking black bear still roaming the Michigan City area gorged from her trash can filled with turkey bones and other food scraps.
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There were also empty bottles of honey and guava nectar in the can along with Popsicle sticks available, perhaps, for dessert.

She and her husband, Leon, stood for about a minute watching the bear illuminated by a porch light before it headed back off into the woods along U.S. 20 near a heavily used public access fishing site at Trail Creek just east of Johnson Rd.

''He was nibbling on leftovers from my four-year-olds. There's always something sweet in there,'' said Lambert.

It was the first reported sighting of the bear in about a week and four days after a honey maker about a mile to the north on Warnke Road had his bee hives toppled over for the second time.

Lambert said she was lying down just after midnight Friday when she heard some loud banging as if a burglar was going through stuff inside her garage.

She opened the curtain and saw the bear, then yelled at her husband who raced to the screen door just ten feet away from the bear looking right at home picking through the trash in their driveway.

''He was shiny and looked very healthy. His tongue was very moist. That's how much I saw,'' said Mrs. Lambert.

Leon was flipping the porch light on and off to try and scare it when the bear made its way around their detached garage and back into the woods, leaving a trail of prints in the soft ground.

There were also prints and scratch marks on two garbage cans and a single print was discovered on a dusty golf car parked in the garage left open.

The property is owned by Ted Woodard, who came out and speculated the bear was in the garage trying to find some mouse traps baited with peanut butter.

''It's just nature. You see deer. You see fox. You see all of the good stuff out here but bears, you wouldn't expect to see something like that,'' said Woodard.

Shaniqua estimated the bear weighed roughly 250 pounds.

She said the bear also looked wet, possibly from the dew in the brush and on the ground or from wading through Trail Creek -- a popular spot for anglers fishing for trout and salmon that runs a just a stone's throw from their residence.

''If I had to guess I would say he had just gotten out of the water. That's how shiny he was and he looked like he was smiling. He was very comfortable,'' Shaniqua said.

The bear also toppled the garbage cans at a house just over 100 feet away and a block of the north along Menke Road.

Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Shawn Brown said there's been no change in the strategy of monitoring the bear's activity since the first tracks were spotted two weeks ago a few miles east of Michigan City.

Ever since, all of the other sightings and evidence of a bear have come from within a one or two mile radius, except for tracks discovered several miles to the north close to some blueberry fields just south of the Michigan line.

Experts are confident the bear will eventually make the 200 mile trip back to the Muskegon area where the first sighting was reported nearly two months ago because July 1 is the start of mating season.

If that day comes, some people might be sad to say farewell to the bear given the amount of interest and enthusiasm brought out by the first confirmed bear in Indiana since 1871.

''It's a very interesting topic of discussion that we would have a bear here in Indiana and it's something people have been following,'' said Brown.
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Southsider2k12
post Jul 16 2015, 09:42 AM
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Spotted again the other day.

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/Officers-ch...orhood/34176824
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taxthedeer
post Jul 17 2015, 06:06 PM
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DNR officials urges if you encounter the Bear run straight to the end zone. Bears rarely ever go there.
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diggler
post Jul 18 2015, 05:45 AM
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Thats why you should always save your 4th of July fireworks leftovers. You just never know when and where they might come in handy. Matter of fact...they saved my life once, when one of these critters snuck up on me while camping in Canada. Incidentally, black bears don't necessarily have to be...'black'
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Southsider2k12
post Jul 30 2015, 11:19 AM
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He's back...

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/wandering-b...-visit/34442696
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diggler
post Aug 2 2015, 04:20 AM
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Wonder if he had a chance to gorge himself in the local area blueberry farms yet.

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diggler
post Oct 10 2015, 12:04 PM
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Black bear that visited Indiana this summer returns to state



A black bear that roamed into Indiana from southwestern Michigan this summer and eventually returned home is back in the Hoosier state, raiding bird feeders and trash cans as it fattens up for winter hibernation, a wildlife biologist said Friday.

The juvenile male reached Indiana's Michigan City area, just south of the Indiana-Michigan state line, early Thursday but may have slipped into Indiana the day before, said Budd Veverka, a farmland game research biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

When the bear crossed into Indiana in early June it became the state's first confirmed wild black bear sighting in 144 years. Hunting and habitat loss had eradicated the species in the 1800s.

Veverka said the bear was last seen in the Michigan City area in late July and is believed to have spent most of the past two months just north of the state line, feeding on native nuts, berries and insects that are becoming increasingly scarce.

Now that he's back in Indiana he's been raiding residents' bird feeders and trash cans.

"A bear's life is ruled by food. And now he's trying to build weight, to build fat for winter. He's trying to get food wherever he can," Veverka said.

Pete Livas of Panos Farms, a Michigan City honey and herb farm about 4 miles south of the Indiana-Michigan state line, said the bear visited the farm early Thursday, upended a trash can and feasted on peanut butter and old honey in discarded jars.

He found the bear's footprints in the area where the farm's beehives are kept, but those hives are now in winter storage. During the summer, however, the bear broke into some hives and devoured close to 10 pounds of honey, Livas said.

The bear has now visited the farm four times since June, but Livas said it hasn't been too much of a problem. In fact, he and his wife find the elusive animal an amusing and interesting visitor.

"We think it's kind of cool that's he still around," he said.

Veverka said the bear could possibly hibernate in the Michigan City area if it finds a suitable den such as a hollow tree. Black bears usually hibernate between late November and late December.

"At this point, I'd say it's unlikely that he moves real far back north," he said.

Associated Press
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diggler
post Apr 13 2016, 06:37 AM
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Michigan City bear killed after trying to enter homes

Joseph S. Pete joseph


The black bear that wandered to Northwest Indiana last year was killed in Michigan after attempting to break into two homes in Stevensville in the Harbor County area, about 30 miles from the state line.

The 2- to 3-year-old male bear, which was repeatedly spotted around Michigan City last year, came out of hibernation three or four weeks ago and has been spotted almost daily in Southwest Michigan, said Mark Sargent, the Southwest Wildlife field operations manager.

Last week, it reared onto its hind legs and tried to push open a screen door, terrifying the homeowner and renewing an effort to catch it.

"It had become too familiar with people," Sargent said.

"When they're not scared of people, it raises it to a higher level of threat. We followed our guidelines and made the decision to euthanize it."

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources caught the bear — the first seen in Indiana in 144 years — with the same trap it escaped from last year, when the trap was on loan to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The bear rummaged through garbage cans, knocked over bee hives and approached back porches during its visit to Indiana.

Michigan authorities reset the trap and used sweets like honey, doughnuts, bacon and sardines to lure in the bear.

After it was caught Saturday, they tranquilized the bear, shot it with a handgun and sent it to the disease laboratory in Lansing, Michigan, to get checked out.

About once a year, bears wander into southern Michigan, but they rarely get put down, Sargent said.

"They normally do a lookabout and turn around, but this one went further south and got habituated to people," he said. "When the young males get thrown out of a pack they go to try to find their own territories. Some of them are great wanderers."

Sargent said it was regrettable the bear had to be killed, but that it posed an increasing threat to people, the more it got used to being around them.

"It's unfortunate, but it left us with very little wiggle room," he said.
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