Poland residents report seeing hulking animal

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

POLAND

Photo

Someone’s been knocking over bird feeders in the village, and it isn’t Goldilocks.

A bear was seen by residents of Audubon Lane and Windemere Drive, and village police received about 20 calls from them Tuesday morning.

“We haven’t seen it yet, but we’ve seen damage and evidence” of its existence, said Police Chief Russell Beatty Jr.

A handful of residents on Sena Lane and North Lima Road in Springfield Township

reported seeing the burly roamer late Monday night, said Matthew Mohn, Springfield Township’s police chief.

About 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Linda Monaco of Paulin Drive in Boardman heard something outside her house. When she went outside she saw that her trash can had been knocked over and the trash bags dragged into the woods that borders her driveway.

“I thought it was raccoons,” Monaco said.

She turned her can right side up, replaced the lid and went back in the house.

“He must have been watching me because I went into the house and closed the garage door, and I heard something again,” Monaco said.

She looked out the window to see the bear knock over her trash can again, rummaging for food. She called to her sons, Joel, 26, and Jared, 21, who ran to see it too.

“I didn’t get a picture,” Monaco said. “I was too panicked.”

She called police, who weren’t able to locate the animal.

Monaco planned to keep her trash in her

garage overnight and return it to the curb closer to today’s pickup time.

Beatty said residents reported the bear stands about 5 feet — tall enough to snatch seed from people’s bird feeders.

Police found a bent-over bird feeder on Windemere.

That’s a sign a bear’s been there, according to Laura Graber, a wildlife-research technician with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife.

Though birdseed attracts raccoons as well as black bears, a raccoon doesn’t have the strength to bend over the post from which a feeder hangs.

Black-bear sightings occur during spring and summer in Ohio.

“We’re in bear-breeding season right now,” she said.

Males are searching for females with which to mate, and bear parents are scuttling their young bears out on their own, Graber said.

Her division tracks bear sightings in 19 counties in Northeast Ohio. So far this year, 17 sightings have been reported but only two confirmed.

A confirmed sighting means that someone from the division has found evidence — tracks, scat, bear hair — indicating that a bear was in the area, or saw a photograph or video of the animal.

The two that were confirmed this year were both on ODNR property at Mosquito Creek in Trumbull County.

Black bears aren’t typically aggressive, but if you see one, don’t corner it, Graber said.

“They’re typically more afraid of us than we are of them,” she said.

Keep your trash inside until the day of removal to discourage bears from coming onto your property and take bird feeders down.

“They love birdseed,” Graber said. “Once they get a taste of it, they’ll go to every bird feeder they see.”

Also, if you grill outdoors, make sure you clean up the grill when you’re done, she said.

When the division gets a bear-sighting report, they dispatch personnel.

“We try to harass it away,” Graber said. “That usually works.”

Harassment methods include noise to scare off the bear. In the rare cases when that doesn’t work, the bear may be tranquilized and moved to a different location.

The division would destroy only a bear that displayed aggression, Graber said.