Unbearable weather for a bear ~ January 15, 1987

David Heiller

Cold enough for you?

That question usually starts the coffee shop conversation at this time of year. But lately people have been asking the summer version: “Warm enough for you?”

These crazy balmy days are enough to upset a Minnesotan. Monday saw 48 degrees in Minneapolis

45 in Duluth, both new records. Tuesday was a repeat, with more new records.

Rumors vary about how we are coping with the heat wave. Duquette General Store has had a problem with some Nickerson folks sleeping in the store’s chest freezers. Nickerson bodies can’t handle warm Januaries—their genes aren’t used to it. Then Jean VanderWerf had to chase away a teenager who was lounging in the new walk-in coolers at Askov Grocery, wearing Bermuda shorts and sun glasses.

It really got bad at Banning State Park, when ranger Randy Gordon ordered a bush pilot in from Nebraska to seed the clouds in hopes of producing snow for the ski trails. And Petry’s Baits in Finlayson has been saving empty tuna cans and storing them in the ice box—seems Calvin Petry sells them to hardy ice fishermen as hand coolers to replace hand warmers.

But these rumored acts of strange human behavior don’t compare with the bear at the Art and Sharon Exsted farm, two miles east of Kerrick. Bears are usually sleeping this time of year, in a state of hibernation even deeper than some of those ice fishermen who are buying hand coolers in Finlayson.

So the Exsteds were quite surprised to find a large black bear standing by their window on Christmas morning.

Art’s first instinct was to grab his gun and chase the darn thing off. Sharon held him back. After all, it wasn’t hurting anything, and it was Christmas morning.

The bear didn’t seem to mind the Exsted dogs, and it wasn’t long before the dogs quit barking at the bear. It soon quit climbing the large elm tree, and instead just lay on the ground by the trunk.

Αrt put hay bales out by the tree, making a little den for the bear, which Sharon named Honey Bear. Then they waited for Honey to leave.

Honey stayed.

Four days later, on December 29, the Exsteds called Curt Rossow, DNR Enforcement Officer from Willow River. Curt drove to the Exsted farm, pulling a live trap to catch the bear. Art had changed his attitude to the bear, growing as fond of it as Sharon.

“As long as it don’t hurt us, I don’t want to hurt it,” Art told Curt as they set up the live trap. Honey Bear watched from the top of the elm tree, where it had climbed 10 minutes before Curt’s arrival.

A bear live trap looks like a 10-foot section of large culvert, with a heavy screen welded on one end, and a sliding door on the other. The door is rigged open using a cable and lever hooked to a bucket inside the trap. The bear smells the bait, crawls into the culvert, pulls at the bucket, and releases the door, which slams shut behind it.

So Curt filled the bucket with grease donated by Ma’s Cafe in Hinckley, while Art and Sharon and Honey Bear looked on.

Curt assured the Exsteds that Honey Bear would like Ma’s grease. He dabbed some on the hay bales, and left a trail of it leading into the live trap. He told them that Honey Bear would soon have a new home deep in the Nemadji Forest, probably near Beldon Townsite by the Wisconsin state line. That might not be far enough, since a bear with a mission can travel 30 miles in a night. Rossow recalls a bear shot by Frank Skaff north of Finlayson that had Wisconsin ear tags on it.

Honey Bear is probably a two-year-old male, Rossow figures. “Those two-year-old males are always the ones that are getting into trouble,” Curt said. “Just like a teenager, I guess.”

After Rossow drove away, Honey Bear climbed down from the tree. He sniffed at the grease, but he didn’t go into the trap. Instead, he lounged around the yard, enjoying the warm weather. He didn’t eat, not even the dog food. He just hung out, like a teenager.

Art and Sharon waited another week. Honey Bear walked around and around. He sat on the front steps.

But he didn’t go into the trap. The Exsteds thought about Rossow’s advice, that Honey Bear might seem like a honey, but he was, after all, 200 pounds of unpredictable wild animal. They thought about making a pet of her.

“It was getting tame,” Art said. “We thought about keeping it, but we’d have to declaw it, and that would be hard on the animal.”

So they called Rossow again, and told him to bring his tranquillizer gun. But once again, Honey Bear was ahead of them. The next morning, January 6, when a livestock dealer rattled into the Exsted yard, Honey Bear had had enough of the good life.

“Down the road he went, and he never stopped,” Art said. The 13-day visit had ended.

But Honey Bear’s adventures may not be over yet. Certainly the spring weather hasn’t triggered hibernation. And Dutch Jones, the Exsted’s neighbor to the west, has reported a bear walking around and around her wood pile, and sitting on her patio. It sounds like Honey Bear, except that it chased Dutch back into the house as she headed for her garage on Monday. Is Honey Bear getting nervous, maybe οver-heated?

We could all use some colder weather.