Pie Gobbling Bear Crashes Party

Pie Gobbling Bear Crashes Party

VANCOUVER - A black bear cub raided a North Vancouver kitchen, gobbling a blackberry pie intended for a dinner party.

Lynn and James Hill were expecting their guests Sunday night, when the young bear apparently walked right into the couple's kitchen, attracted by the smell of the freshly baked pie.

Hill, who came upon the bear unawares, screamed "blue murder" at the cub, his wife told Vancouver newspaper, the Province.

Hill shouted: "Bad bear! Go away, bad bear!", but the animal was unfazed, she said.

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The cub, which weighed about 45 kilograms, ran out of the house. The Hills later realized it had also eaten a block of butter, including its foil, and chewed on more than a dozen apples, oranges, pears and avocados.

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A provincial conservation officer said the bear would be put down if it repeated its stunt. A volunteer with the North Shore Black Bear Network said the cub was harmless, one of six orphans in the area probably looking for food because their natural foods had ripened early and were depleted.

Unlike grizzlies, black bears will abandon their cubs on occasion, Barbara Murray said. She estimated there were as many as 50 bears on the north shore in 2004.

We are approaching the tale end of raccoon season out here in the boondocks, and one encounters them with some frequency, and increasing boldness as the weather cools a bit.

A few years ago I lived in a house with a pull down stair to the attic. One day, I pulled down the stairs and climbed up to suddenly find myself face to face with Mommy raccoon who had decided to raise her family in my house (a bucket of ammonia, 7/24 light, and a blaring radio eventually drove them out, and then we sealed the holes). Another time I tried to roust some from beneath my porch, and was quite distressed to come face to face with Momma raccoon while wriggling into an 18" crawl space (I got out of there fast, because she could have torn me up easily).

But what made me think of all this was the time my neighbor returned home from the grocery store and put the bags on the kitchen counter. Something came up and she was quite surprised an hour later when she returned to put away the groceries - a raccoon had torn a hole in the screen, and was happily sampling the delicacies from the now quite unpacked grocery bags. I forget how the raccoon was convinced to decamp, but something had smelled too good to resist.