White-faced bear comes a calling

(Photo by Arturo de Frias Marques)

When Ruby Kaleak got the dispatch call last week, she couldn’t quite believe it.   After all, it’s not every day that a polar bear comes to visit.

Kaleak, whose part-time job is “polar bear patrol” within an Alaskan village, rushed to the scene.  Anchorage Associated Press reports that she came face-to-face with an enormous white bear that was “feasting on a drum of seal oil in the entryway” of an 81-year-old woman’s home.

This story had a happy ending for all concerned.  The bear had its fill before escaping into the wild, and no humans were harmed.

Although this particular white-faced bear was driven by hunger (“as ice has receded to deep water beyond the continental shelf, more bears are remaining on land to look for food”), legendary white-faced bears had different motives.

Amy Sillup gives this explanation: Aleut lore tells of a white-faced bear that “walks the woods as a spirit bear, reminding people to take from nature only as much as they need.”  Had folks only heeded this advice long ago, today’s polar bears might be a lot less hungry.

Resources

https://suite.io/amy-sillup/301a2hk

http://news.yahoo.com/polar-bear-breaks-home-alaska-village-161129908.html

Copyright October 16, 2014 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved