Kelly, I've got a feeling we're not in Foster City anymore

I've always been a cultural observer. When I travel, I like to get off the beaten tourist path to find the heart of a place, where locals congregate, so I can soak up the flavor of their lives. I'm fascinated by the unique aspects of communities--especially those that set them apart from one another. And so, in moving from Foster City to Redding, with such sharp contrasts on so many levels, I was handed a veritable playground for observation.

In the months since we moved, I've kept a pen and paper in the truck for jotting down notes about things I've spotted around town--things I'd likely not have seen back home, particularly those which have served as reminders that we're no longer living in a major metropolitan area. At some point, I hope to make a blog out of them. But for now, they'll have to wait. Because this morning, observations about cowboy hats and mud-covered four-by-fours were made mundane and insignificant by the headline splashed across our local paper, the Record Searchlight:

BEAR STRAYS INTO REDDING: Animal tranquilized in Shady Lane backyard

The prominent photo, shown at left, featured an adolescent male black bear being carried away after fire, police and animal control officers tranquilized the animal repeatedly and brought it down from the tree in which it had lodged itself in the backyard of a home near the intersection of Shady and Mistletoe Lanes.

Shady Lane. And Mistletoe. According to Yahoo Maps, that's...oh, about half a mile from us. And I'm not talking as the crow flies, either, in which case it's much closer. Sort of makes the incident we had in our own backyard yesterday, during which two teenage punks hopped our fence and burst through the gate as a shortcut for their skateboarding antics, look pretty mild, unsettling as it was at the time.

So, forget the harmless garden snake that crawled into bed with me one night when we lived in Southern California. Forget the pesky rats that used to steal tomatoes from my vines and, when the mood fit them, crawl into our heating ducts and die when we lived in Foster City. And forget the mountain lions we were constantly warned lurked in the foothills back home. Because here, we've got bears. Not Yogi, Baloo, or even Smokey, but real, tree-climbing, hibernating, honey-eating bears. The horrors! Where's Marlin Perkins when you need him?

Of course, as Kelly pointed out, there'd have been a bright side if the bear had chosen our backyard instead: At least it might have eliminated, either by fright or other means, the band of marauding cats that use our property nightly to fight, mate, and otherwise raise as much noise and ruckus as possible. Indeed.

A bear lodged in the tree in your backyard--now that's one I'll be pondering for awhile, especially since we're fairly rural at the moment compared to the hilltop location we'll be moving to soon. Butting right up to the chaparral, just minutes from the edge of civilization. Remote enough to be dependent upon the California Department of Forestry to do our firefighting. With our back fence on Quartz Hill Road. The same Quartz Hill Road that was also mentioned in today's paper, after local kids began finding glow worms in fields adjacent to it. Of course, the article also went on to quote a UC Davis entomologist, who said the reason more glow worms aren't found locally is because to see them, you have to go walking around at night with no lights. And doing that, he said, is a good way "to step on (a) rattlesnake." Oh, my.

So, if this city simpleton came up here looking for an education in the local flavor of life, I assure you he got one in a hurry this morning. Boy, did he. And while these latest territorial tidbits will settle in over time as surely as all the others I've encountered to date in the town I now call home, you'll have to forgive me if I occasionally check the branches of the trees near our new house--and avoid walking around after dark without a flashlight. Because knowing what I know now, you're not going to hear me apologizing for doing either one!

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Note: Text of the article about the bear follows, borrowed completely without permission--same as the above photo--from the 6/20/06 edition of the Record Searchlight.

Bear strays into Redding
Animal tranquilized in Shady Lane backyard

By Constance Dillon, Record Searchlight
June 20, 2006

Animal control officers Monday afternoon used a tranquilizer gun to knock out an adolescent black bear that had taken refuge in a large tree in the backyard of a home on Shady Lane at Mistletoe Lane in Redding.

It wasn't until two hours after the bear was tranquilized with three darts that officers were able to remove it from the tree, where it had wedged itself in the crook of two large branches.

Redding police and fire, state Department of Fish and Game and animal control officers were called to the east Redding neighborhood just south of the Dana Drive shopping area to investigate a bear sighting about 3 p.m.

Tracy Muncy and her son Chris, 16, saw the bear climb over the backyard fence of their home in the 1200 block of Mistletoe.

The bear then wandered up the block and into backyards on Shady Lane.

"Our dog was barking like crazy," said Jennifer Rodrigues, 14, who lives in a house next door to where the bear was finally caught.

"When I first saw it, I thought it was a big, black dog. Then I saw this big, black butt," she said.

Police and the state Fish and Game officers staked out an area surrounding the fenced yard while neighbors and passers-by began to gather across the street.

After the bear was tranquilized, firefighters brought out a large ladder, and a Fish and Game officer climbed up and tied a rope onto the bear's left hind leg.

The bear then was gently pushed from the fork in the tree and lowered safely to the ground.

Fish and Game officers said they will return the bear to a more appropriate habitat.

"They'll take the bear out pretty far from where he was found," said Redding police Sgt. Rich Nance. "I've heard Fish and Game say that once a bear finds his way into a residential area, they'll try to come back."

Many neighbors who gathered to watch were surprised that a bear could wander into such a developed area.

Fish and Game officers think the bear probably followed a natural drainage waterway that winds through the neighborhood, Nance said.