The Art of Gluttony: Bears and their Vittles

food that we so carelessly waste and throw away in our garbage. It is at this time that you get all those reports of "problem" bears. If they have any other choice (black bear researchers back East have seen the bears contemptuously turn up their noses at offered goodies just so they can walk 20 miles to a grove of ripe hazelnuts), most bears prefer to keep out of the way of humans, but in a bad year they seem to figure that the risk of a quick death by bullets beats the certainty of slow death by starvation. Some bears show a perilous addiction to human foods, especially if they were introduced to it as cubs. Cubs imprint on what their mothers show them to eat. It is especially important as a result to keep them away from human foods. Rehabilitators raising bear cubs for release into the wild are careful to imprint them on wild foods once they grow past infancy.

When the cold weather starts setting in and foods become scarce, the bears abruptly lose their appetite and become sleepy. Travelling lethargically through the woods, they find dens for themselves. They hang around the den until they permanently go in. For the first few weeks, they are a bit restless in their dens but gradually full hibernation sets in. Who knows what they dream of in their long sleep?

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