Peaches and herb
Mama and cub reunited … with a little help from everybody.
While we too often hear about the tales that end in woe, here’s one that ends well.
On Thursday July 9, Town Wildlife Specialist Steve Searles responded to a bear call in the Village at Mammoth.
A young cub was moonlighting as a part-time concierge at the Grand Sierra Lodge.
As Searles recounted, he could hear him before he could see him. Perhaps sixty tourists were circled around the cub like he was a city street performer. Others stood on the foot bridge above.
No one, noted Searles, was looking to see where Mom might be, or what path she might take to get to her cub, or that this might be a dangerous situation.
MLPD Chief Al Davis and Sgt. Marc Moscowitz also responded to the call. Town Councilman Shields Richardson stopped when he saw the commotion and ended up volunteering as a traffic cop as events unfolded.
“I do what it takes for our community,” said Richardson with a laugh. “It was fun to see people so excited.”
The group tried to coax the cub across the street and into the forest over the next 20 to 30 minutes with little success – the cub just kept zig-zagging back and forth across the street.
Searles had to leave for a short period to assist Sgt. Eric Hugelman, who was responding to a deer which had been hit on Lake Mary Road. The deer was mortally wounded and Hugelman had to put it down. Searles and Hugelman loaded the deer into the back of Searles’ pickup – while bystanders literally filmed them doing it.
Returning to the bear cub scene, a local drove by and told Searles there was a bear loitering around at the top of the Knolls neighborhood.
Wondering if there was a connection, Searles drove up and located the bear. Sure enough, it was a sow he’d never seen before. While Searles shepherded the sow down to the Village, Davis and Moscowitz managed to get the cub across the street, through the Val D’Isere property and into the forest on the other side.
The pair reunited at the base of the uptown/downtown mountain bike trails.
The Sheet asked Davis if he felt worried at any point.
Chief Davis: With the cub, no, never. I was literally inches away from it, talking. But later, when the mom started coming closer, Sergeant [Mark] Moscowitz said ‘There’s mom,’ and ran the other way. I did the same … Sergeant Moscowitz has more experience with bears than I do.
Chief Davis did say that the experience with the cub demonstrated the importance of Mammoth’s leash law, as “numerous people there had dogs off leash, and of course the dogs frightened the cub.”
Chief Davis also said the dogs off leash made officers’ efforts to keep the cub away from the street more challenging. He said the leash law “is important for the safety of the citizenry and other dogs, but also for the bears.”
Searles tiold The Sheet he hasn’t personally spotted the two bears since, but there was a reported sighting at Canyon Lodge at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday night. The bears were spotted by security in the parking lot.
