We have had a black bear wandering around the neighborhood for a couple days, mostly just casually exploring, knocking over a few trash cans without actually digging into the trash. The “dog walker” grapevine had its travels pretty well mapped and it hasn’t hurt anybody (it is well fed healthy and behaving normally). It seems like it has wandered off and we were all starting to relax a little.
Today, our local maintenance company (who owns all the land in the area, it is complicated) sent out a “Bear Sighting” email, which just had a link to a Fish and Wildlife article on things to make your area less attractive to bears.
(secure trash cans, remove bird feeders, stuff like that)
But then there is this one:
If you have a bear getting into or damaging your chicken coops, we recommend putting a hotwire around your coop or playing talk radio near the coop through speakers to try to prevent the bear from coming around.
Because clearly, the bear’s liberal sensitivities will be offended by the political content of the right wing talk shows! The rare conservative bear though, might be attracted, so this isn’t an entirely reliable strategy.