Bear defeats engineers

The New York TImes has a very interesting article this morning on a shy middle-aged black bear (a female of course) that has consistently defeated a state-of-the-art bear proof canister.

Zoo bears couldn't crack it, but this one could.

Now other bears are catching on.

Read about it here.

Are your garbage cans bear proof?

Do you live in bear country? Will the wild bear get in your garbage can and scatter trash all over the place?

You bet she will. And she'll make it a habit if you reward her by doing the same dumb thing over again. She'll teach her cubs that garbage cans are bountiful providers.

Yes, we can call Cal Fish & Game, and they'll remove the offending bear. They'll 'off' repeat offenders. For bears, it's only two strikes and you're out. If I may paraphrase Pogo "the enemy are us".

We live close to a large wilderness area, and God willing, the bears will be here for a long time. They quickly adapted to our presence. We need to use our heads and adapt to theirs. I know that bears are smart, and I know they are strong, but most people are smarter.

Some of my readers here on the ridge have bear problems. We did too. We kept our garbage in the garage until garbage collection day. That didn't solve the problem, because the garbage man comes early in the morning. Old people don't like to start the day wrestling garbage cans. We prefer to eat mush and sip coffee peacefully in the morning. That's why we put the garbage out the night before morning collection.

So I wrote a letter to Waste Management, introduced myself as a wildlife biologist, blew a little smoke about their reputation as environmentally sensitive recyclers, and suggested they address the bear problem by scheduling garbage pickup later in the day. It was a terribly logical and compelling letter. Bears don't bother garage cans very often in the heart of the burbs. Out here on the frontier they do. Why not just reschedule the pickup in light of that undeniable fact.

Waste Management thanked me for my concern, and told me they couldn't reschedule. Had I thought of buying a bear proof garbage can?

Picking up bear-scattered garbage however is a wonderful motivator, and "need is the mother of invention". So my neighbor Richard and I tried an experiment. We wired our garbage cans with alarms. When you lift the lid the alarm goes off.

Earlier this year a new contractor took over garbage collection and we had to re-arm the new garbage containers. I took pictures of the operation, and you can read how it is done here.

As an added measure I attached a couple pieces of velcro to the container. A little ammonia spray doesn't smell like food to bears.

I know the bears are still here, and I am not saying the alarms are 100% effective. But we haven't had any bears in our garbage for a long time now.

If the bear ups the ante, we'll go back to the drawing board.

Canary in the garbage

The garbage collector gave us a new garbage can. The previous one was too big, so we opted for the smaller and cheaper one.

"That's a dink can", scoffed the redhead on seeing the replacement.

"But small is beautiful", I replied wondering where she came up 'dink can'. "It's a cute little can, just look at it!"

Neighbor Richard suggested we arm our 'dink cans' with "screaming canaries" to keep the bears away. He is convinced the one dollar security alarms deterred the garbage-scrounging bear last year.

Maybe so. Our neighbors had garbage-bear problems, but we didn't. Our cans were armed with "screaming canaries". Presumably the shock effect of the siren is enough to scare the bear. It sure worked on me everytime I forgot it was on. I didn't do a backward roll and chop my jaws in retreat, but I cursed it somewhat affectionately.

The screaming canary is actually a cheapo security alarm with a piezoelectric oscillating siren. It's a low-power-consuming sound alarm like those used in smoke detectors. It sounds like a German roller canary on steroids and methamphetamines. The alarm goes off when you remove the magnet.

Here's how Richard armed the garbage cans.



He mounted the alarm on the lip of the can, and fixed the magnet on the lid. The alarm is fastened to the metal bracket with double-sided tape, and the bracket and magnet are bolted to the can.



Spacing is critical, so he used scrap plexiglass as a spacer to align alarm and magnet. The red color is fingernail polish. (Richard has an artistic streak.) It also locks the nut and bolt together.



The plastic material is a rain shield.

One of these days I'll get around to experimenting on the effects of the alarm on pestiferous wildlife. Meanwhile, we'll keep the faith that they actually work.