The number 6 grizz catcher

Grizz traps -- god-awful devices and troubling reminders of the past.

Gone are California's grizzlies, and gone are the absent-minded vaqueros who undoubtedly stumbled into those gaping jaws of steel hidden in the chaparral.

And woe betide any latter day codgers who play Russian roulette with such deadly toys.

Have you noticed that those springs are wired open?

Well, that's why. Codgers and teen age boys are attracted to such things.

According to A.R.Harding's Project Gutenberg EBook of Steel Traps:

"This is known as the No. 6 or Grizzly Bear Trap and has a spread of jaws of 16 inches. It weighs complete, 42 pounds. This is the strongest trap made. The manufacturers say they have never heard of anything getting out of it when once caught. It is often called 'the Great Bear Tamer.'"

The treadle in the Ebook was simply labeled "No. 6", but this particular one was also stamped with the name of our extinct state mammal:

My friend Paul -- proud owner of a Lickety Splitter, collector of old gadgets, old bottles, old Italian sports cars, and antique tractors among other things -- found it recently at a swap meet.

We get together twice a year, and since we inevitably talk of old things I always ask if he's found any grizz traps.

It's kind of a joke, but damned if he didn't find one, buy it, and give me right of first refusal.

The problem was this -- where do you put a grizz trap?

So I tactfully posed the question. 

"Don't you think it would add a wonderful touch of frontier California to the patio?" 

The redhead didn't agree.

And so I wistfully demurred.

"No problem," said Paul, "I can always find a buyer or swap it for something else."

But he agreed to hold onto it until I stopped by to take some pictures.

A month later we spent a fine day together, and I could tell he was growing fond of the Number 6.

"At our age," he reflected, "you have to decide what you don't need, and what you want to own when you die."

"I think I may just keep it."

"There's a screw-clamp that came with those traps," he continued, "to clamp the springs and open the jaws."

steel trap setting clamp

"I've seen a few for sale, but I never knew what they were."

"I may get one of those too."

A memento of Alta California -- a 42 lb contrivance of spring steel, forged in Massachusetts 130 years ago, shipped to California, forgotten in someone's shed --- has found a new home.

The rest of No. 6's story we will never know.

Chimineas' black bears -- descendants of pioneers

A descendant of the black bears that pushed the frontier into California's Central Coast Range.

Before the demise of our late and great state mammal -- the Grizzly -- black bears didn't trod the trails of the Chimineas Ranch.

The two bears coexisted in much of pre-over-developed California, but not in the Central Coast Range.

Nor were black bears found in in the Central Valley, the Los Angeles basin, and the San Francisco Bay/Delta region where Grizz reined supreme.

Something about those exclusively Grizz areas was unsuitable for black bears.

The smaller bear couldn't compete with the big bear for food, and in sparsely treed areas, it couldn't climb out of the Grizzly's reach when there were altercations.

Well, those are the hypotheses.

Before the last Grizz died in the 1920s however Joseph Grinnell noted that black bears were starting to show up in the mountains of southern California.

The Department of Fish & Game approved of the immigrant bears as a tourist attraction, and in the 1930s lent a helping hand by capturing and moving 28 black bears from Yosemite to the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

Recently Sarah Brown and colleagues at UC Davis, Cal Fish & Game and the US Fish & Wildlife Service examined the molecular genetics of 540 California black bears to better understand their relationships and history.

They found that California's black bears fall into 4 major groups based on population genetics.

The North Coast/Klamath bears are the most genetically diverse, while the southern Sierra Nevada/ Central Coast population are the least diverse, though still within the range of genetically healthy populations elsewhere in the US.

Depending on analysis Sierra Nevada black bears fall into 2 or 3 genetic clusters along the mountains 650 kilometer length.

Pioneering bears of the Sierra Nevada invaded the exclusive domains of Grizz in Southern California and the Central Coast Range.

Southern California bears, the descendants of pioneers and translocated animals resemble bears of the Central Sierra Nevada.

Central Coast Range bears, including the bears of the Chimineas Ranch and Carrizo Plains are genetically related to the bears of the Southern Sierra Nevada.

That bear at the top of the page has no idea of its ancestors who forsook the Sierra Nevada for the hot summers and rainy winters of the central coast.

Come to think of it, I know as much about my own ancestors.  

[Nota bene: the young bear above was camera trapped on the Chimineas Ranch in July, 2010. The photo is uncropped.]


References

Brown, S.K., J.M. Hull, D.R. Updike, S.R. Fain, and H.B. Ernest. 12009. Black bear population genetics in California: signatures of population structure, competitive release, and historical translocation. Jounral of Mammalogy, 90(5):1066-1074.

Grinnell, J., J.S. Dixon, and J.M. Linsdale. 1937. Fur-bearing mammals of California. University of California Press, Berkeley

Storer, T.I. and J. Tevis. 1996. California grizzly. University of California Press, Los Angeles.

Commentary: trained bears and tame killers

The fate of the show-biz grizzly bear that killed a professional animal handler yesterday is undecided. The 5-year-old 700 lb bear unexpectedly lunged and killed the handler with a neck bite. Two other trainers used pepper spray to get it under control. OSHA and California Fish & Game are investigating, and animal advocates and private citizens are voicing opinions.

Captive animal managers, and I am talking about people like me who have worked in zoos, know that hand-reared birds and mammals can be dangerous, and far more so than those reared and socialized with members of their own species. The reason is that they are extremely tame, which means they are unafraid of people. People take chances with tame animals that they would never take with wild animals.

A few observations.

First, neck biting is a normal pattern of behavior among bears, and for that matter carnivores in general. It may draw blood, but it is not usually fatal. The force of the bite depends on context, as most pet owners know. Play bites are restrained, threat bites hurt, and serious bites cause injury or death. (I should also add that bears have thick hides. The neck skin in particular evolved into a dermal shield to protect vital organs against jaws.)

Second, a fine line separates play fighting and fighting. Rough-and-tumble play among siblings often turns into a fight. We've seen it in dogs, cats, and our own children. It's the same with bears.

So wrestling with tame bears has inherent risks. The only thing protecting a man is his ability to read its moods, and the bear's self restraint. There's a terrific imbalance in size, strength, speed, and reflexes.

But oh, how we love our cockeyed fantasies. Then someone gets hurt or killed. We don't buy into that fate and Kismet stuff, however. We want to fix the problem, and there is no shortage of expert solutions, from revenge to legislation.

The interesting thing to me is that in more fatalistic societies, homicidal animals like the occasional domestic elephant are not condemned to death. As my old Indian friend Doc Krishnamurthy used to say, "Human life is our cheapest commodity".

When an elephant kills its mahout in Sri Lanka and India, new mahouts clamor to take over. I co-advised a masters student who studied the macho phenomenon among Sri Lankan mahouts, and she found that 34% of mahouts said they would prefer a killer elephant to a non-killer. Why? Because they would gain status among their peers, and because the elephants' owners would be less likely to interefere with their work.

Whether spectators or performers, naked apes are the same everywhere. As long as there are bears, snakes and elephants, there will be bear trainers, snake handlers, and mahouts who think they can defy a unique fate.

And you know what? Most of the time they do.


Reference

Godagama, W.K. 1996. An ethno-zoological study of domesticated elephants in Sri Lanka. Masters Thesis, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Human shields

You've heard me say it here before. When the puma's image appears in my local camera traps the local black-tailed deer seem to spend more time lingering in the neighborhood gardens and driveways. The observations could be a coincidence, but maybe something else is going on. The puma, for example, could be following the deer, or the deer could be using the proximity of people and large dogs as a "human shield", a place where human disturbance is more likely to discourage most predators.

Well, Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society recently published a interesting example of how human activity affects wildlife ecology in wilderness areas. During the ten-year study, Joel showed that the moose in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons adjust their use of space in relation to human infrastructure and activity.

Specifically, he found that over the years radiotracked moose have moved closer to roads at calving time. During the birth season, deer in general become secretive and restrict their movement to a very small portion of their home range. Since grizzlies feed on moose calves, but avoid roads in places like Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, they are less likely to encounter this brief but nourishing windfall. The evidence suggests that moose and other prey species find humans more benign and at certain times gravitate to human-modified lanscapes for safety. People just don't tolerate predators as well as they do prey, and thus they create safe havens in the vicinity of buildings, roads, and campgrounds.

Good work, Joel (and send me a reprint, please!)