March 1st, 2007 at 1:23 am
A woman living in a small community west of New York City was startled when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a black bear looking back in at her.
“I was making a pot of coffee, and I turned around and there he was in the window looking at me,” said Lorraine Grossman.
The womans scream spooked the 211 pound bear who ran and climbed a nearby tree. He reached a height of 40 feet and wouldn’t budge. The woman found herself entertaining more than 50 neighbors who gathered in her Maplewood home to watch the bear in the tree for five hours. The bear didn’t do much more than yawn though.
“He’s really kind of cute,” said Joanne Penaluna.
State wildlife officers eventually shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart. After hanging on for about 10 minutes, the bear dropped into a net. It was taken away, tagged, then released at a state wildlife management area.
“It’s not something you get to see every day — bears falling out of trees,” said Pete Samek, whose 5-year-old daughter, Lucy Rose, watched from his shoulders.
Bears usually hibernate from December to March, though they can be easily roused, said Larry Katz, chairman of the animal sciences department at Rutgers University.
“It’s a little early for them to be waking up,” he said. “Someone or something probably walked over the area where it was hibernating.”
Authorities said the bear, a male estimated to be 2 or 3 years old, might have been snacking on birdseed and likely wandered in from the nearby South Mountain Reservation.
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February 20th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
In the North Idaho city of Sandpoint the police are telling residents to stop chasing the moose. During the past few weeks, the Sandpoint Police Department has received dozens of phone calls each day reporting moose inside city limits. Area residents have taken to chasing the moose. Police Chief Mark Lockwood said.
The towns residents are sharing the city with about three to five moose. It’s not all that uncommon for moose to come into areas with a lower elevation in the winter months as the snow is usually not as deep.
“When these animals roam into the city, they can become frightened and disoriented, making them more dangerous than if they were encountered in the wild,” Lockwood said.
One woman pushing a jogging stroller recently chased after a moose in an attempt to photograph it, with a pack of people close behind. If things don’t change, Lockwood said police may have to cite residents for “molesting wildlife.”
“Do not approach any moose, even if it seems quiet and gentle,” Lockwood said. “If approached repeatedly, even by the best-intentioned onlookers, it may become aggressive. Sooner or later Bullwinkle is going to stomp somebody.”
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February 9th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Officials in N.J. has warned squirrel hunters, who live and hunt near a toxic waste dump, about consuming the pesky rodents because they could be contaminated with lead.
This is the one and only time the State has cautioned Ringwood residents, many of whom are members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe who hunt and fish in the area.
Two months ago a lead contaminated squirrel was found in the area which prompted the agency, along with the state department of Environmental Protection to send out letters advising that adults eat squirrel no more than twice a week, and less for children and pregnant women.
Lead is harmful even in small amounts. It can damage the nervous system, red blood cell production and the kidneys.
“We’ve known for a long time something was wrong here, we just didn’t know what it was,” resident Myrtle Van Dunk said.
Residents and many environmental activists believe the lead comes from toxic waste, including paint sludge, dumped in the area by the Ford Motor Co. during the 1960s and early 1970s, from its now-closed car manufacturing plant in Mahwah.
Ford is removing thousands of tons of waste from a 500-acre former mining property in the Ringwood area. The site was recently relisted on the federal Superfund list, a ranking of the country’s worst environmental dump sites, after multiple cleanups failed to remove all the sludge.
Does anyone else besides me think it’s odd that in this day and age that so many people are eating squirrel on a regular basis that a warning like this had to be made?
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