{"id":72984,"date":"2021-07-19T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/on-the-trails-bears-and-bus-in-summer\/"},"modified":"2021-07-20T14:48:04","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T22:48:04","slug":"on-the-trails-bears-and-bus-in-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/on-the-trails-bears-and-bus-in-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Trails: Bears and bugs in summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In mid-July, a bear with a yellow ear tag came through my yard several times. Known as No. 103, she was primarily interested in eating horsetail (and peering in my windows). Lying comfortably on her side, she’d scoop an armful toward her mouth and chomp, move over a little bit and do it again. This bear is estimated to be about 24 years old, looking a bit scruffy and probably too old to have cubs anymore. Her last cub was born in 2019, but we know she had one in 2017 and triplets in 2014 and surely several other cubs before that.<\/p>\n

I wonder if mid-July of this year might have been a difficult time for our bears. The fish weren’t in yet, and the berry crops were not fully ripe yet (it was a slow spring). So maybe then the bears snack on whatever they can find, including horsetail, ground cone and insects. Insects? For a big critter like a bear? Sure.<\/p>\n

A well-known local naturalist and photographer caught a black bear in action, vigorously shredding a big, rotten stump and excavating the major roots, where ants had established a colony. Of course, the ants desperately tried to save their eggs and pupae, carrying them off in hopes of finding a safer place. I went out to look at that old stump and found the bear had dug a hole about three feet deep.<\/p>\n