Bill (& Michelle) Thought you might enjoy this:
Bear-attack victims getting anonymous threats
By Barbara Barte Osborn, Sacramento Bee (Published Sept. 6, 1999)
The trauma that Deanna Marsh and her family suffered when a bear broke into their home in the middle of the night is now being inflamed by phone calls blaming her for the animal's ultimate death.
After it was determined to be a public safety threat, the 500-pound male black bear was shot outside the Marshes' Kings Beach home early last Monday by a game warden and a sheriff's deputy after the family escaped out a window.
The calls started Wednesday morning, four from men and three from women: "Bear murderer!" Marsh was called. Some were more threatening.
"They shouldn't have shot the bear; they should have shot you," Marsh quoted one caller. Another added, "Since they didn't do it, I will be over to take care of that."
Marsh is stunned, and the Placer County Sheriff's Department is investigating.
"In the first place, I didn't shoot the bear," she said. "If a 6-foot-2 man had come through my window and I had shot him, would I be getting these calls?"
In addition, she points out, she and neighbors did everything they could to save the bear, and when that help didn't come, to save themselves.
Threatening calls are not unusual after bear incidents, and they are taken seriously, said sheriff's Sgt. Bill Langton. While annoying and repeated calls are a misdemeanor, threats of death or great bodily injury are a felony, he said.
People who have criticized the Marsh family "weren't huddled in a closet with a 6-year-old, physically shaking we were so scared," said neighbor Donna Robbins, whose home was ransacked Aug. 10, possibly by the same bear.
While she and three children were rescued from second- and third-floor windows in that incident, the bear ripped out a dual-pane window and left.
Robbins said that "bear murderer" posters were tacked to her house after the incident and that a trap placed in her yard by a game warden for two weeks was regularly tripped. When she put up "no trespassing" signs as advised, someone put a "bear murderer" note in an envelope with a rock and threw it at her house.
When she came home from work and saw the posters, "I cried," said Robbins, a 17-year resident. "I felt more threatened by them than the bear. I've seen that bear in the neighborhood for years and not worried about him."
But agency officials say the two families apparently had done everything they could to keep the bear away -- locking up garbage and pet food, cleaning barbecues, putting out ammonia-soaked rags, and trying to frighten it away with loud noises and lights.
Ironically, the fact that there was no food outside may have caused the bear to break into the houses to find some, Langton said.
Marsh said her family had been able to chase the bear away five or six times during the past year with flashing lights, outdoor speakers and horns. "My aim was to get the bear back into the woods," she said, but it gradually had become unafraid of people.
After it broke into her house, she said, she and a neighbor tried unsuccessfully to find an agency that would tranquilize and remove it without killing it.
"We called the government agencies, and we were refused help. No one mentioned the Bear Preservation League. We heard about them later, but they're not in the (phone) book or listed with information. They're out there, but how do you get in touch with them if the people who are supposed to contact them don't do it?"
In addition to the California Department of Fish and Game and the Placer County Sheriff's Office, Marsh said they called the county Animal Control Department and the nonprofit Wildlife Shelter. The latter two "said they wouldn't come if the bear wasn't injured and we weren't in danger."
Animal Control and Wildlife Shelter representatives say they are not trained to handle problem bears, which are Fish and Game's responsibility.
"That's a true statement; we didn't go," said Tom Meadows, a Truckee volunteer who was on call for the Wildlife Shelter during the Marshes' emergency, and recommended they dial 911.
"We don't have the donated funds to hire and train someone who can go out and tranquilize a bear," he said. "The Wildlife Shelter's mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and release injured and orphaned animals."
The Animal Control Department's responsibility is for domestic animals, said its director, Dick Swenson. "We do not handle wildlife, especially bears," he said. "We're not equipped or trained for that."
Anne Bryant, who co-founded the Bear Preservation League last fall after a mother bear and cub were killed when they broke into a house in Homewood, said the 120-member group has trained volunteers who would have chased the bear away with pepper spray had they been called.
Bryant said the group had worked closely with the sheriff and animal-control departments, who referred bear calls to it until about a month ago when the calls abruptly stopped. After Monday's shooting, she tried to learn why they weren't called and was given no answer, she said.
But Langton explained that there's a liability issue in calling on citizens for help in a dangerous situation. And when contacted in the past, he said, league members have said they don't respond to the scene, but instead educate people to keep bears away from their homes.
Fish and Game warden Al Zamudio, who responded to both Robbins' and Marsh's calls, said killing the bear, the first he has had to shoot in 20 years with the department, "wasn't anything I wanted to do -- our job is to protect wildlife."
The department doesn't relocate problem bears, he said, because it is ineffective. And there's a liability problem if they cause injury or other damage where they are relocated, and they usually return anyway.
Referring to people who have criticized the Marsh and Robbins families, he said, "Their idea is to protect the animals and I understand that, but until they experience a 500-pound bear with three small kids in the house . . . all it takes is one swipe, their claws are so powerful." |
