Black Bear Makes Stop At Bristol Regional Medical Center

BRISTOL, Tenn. – The Bristol Regional Medical Center is used to surprises arriving at the emergency room doors. But Monday morning, they got a new one: a big, black bear.
“It pretty much wandered around the parking lot for a minute, lingered at one of the doors for a bit, and then went away,” said Wellmont Health System spokesman Brad Lifford. Security personnel have since roamed the medical center grounds, but found no sign that the bear was still in the area.
“It appears to have just shown up once and gone away,” Lifford said.
Then at noon Friday, Sullivan County residents chased a bear back and forth, and up and down Oak Street, between the Food Country and Blountville Elementary School, said emergency dispatcher Tabatha Darnel.
The county received 15 calls at once about the bear, and sent a half a dozen officers to the scene. But they never found the bear.
“I guess he went off to the woods somewhere,” Darnel said.
Area wildlife experts have one primary suggestion: Get used to it.
“It’s becoming more normal as the bear population increases and the human population increases,” said Allen Boynton, a regional wildlife manager for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. “Not only are people moving into bear habitat, but bears are moving into people habitat.”
This time of year, bears are looking to fatten up for hibernation, eating about 20,000 calories a day. They’ll get those calories anyway they can, Boynton said, whether it be eating nuts and berries in the wild or rummaging through neighborhood trash cans.
Bears are intelligent, resourceful animals, according to a pamphlet distributed by the game department, and can learn to associate human spaces with food.
“They have a real sweet tooth,” Boynton said. “Their sense of smell is very well developed, it exceeds the best hound dog you ever saw. They’ll follow their nose right into your yard and into your birdseed.”
He said he’s even heard of a bear ripping off a car door for a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Experts said the best way to avoid finding a bear in your territory is to remove the temptation. Don’t leave unattended pet food outside, put an electric fence around beehives and handle trash responsibly.
It is illegal in Virginia to feed bears, even inadvertently. The state also outlaws the feeding of deer from Sept. 1 to the first Saturday in January, because it’s hunting season.
But Boynton said it’s basically a bad idea to feed any wild animal.
And with the bear visits, if all else fails, Boynton said, paint ball guns work well to scare them off.
“Most bears are scared of people,” he said. “They’re naturally shy, hunted animals. They don’t want any trouble; they just want your birdseed. But bears can be very big, and very powerful creatures. Imagine a three- or 400-pound man climbing right up a tree. You don’t want to tango with a bear. If they get your picnic basket, don’t try to take it away.”
Still, Boynton said, very few people are hurt by bears, and no one in the state of Virginia has ever been killed by one. Tennessee has seen just two deaths, both in the last several years, said Dan Gibbs, a wildlife biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
The agency is planning to launch a bear education program because of the increasing number of interactions with humans.
“In Blountville, you’re in the middle of a county that has bears from one end of the county to the other,” Gibbs said of the elementary school sighting. “Things like that are going to happen, and they’re going to continue to happen.
“You can’t just do what you’re used to doing: Going out pouring 2 pounds of dog food and letting the dog munch all day at leisure,” he said. “Little things like that go a long way.”
Gibbs said that if people just leave bears alone, give them plenty of space and don’t call the neighbors over to gawk, the animals will usually just wander on.
Boynton said most people are happy to have bears in the area, so they can get a glimpse of them from time to time, and they just have to take the extra steps to avoid confrontations.
Captain Maynard Ratcliff with the Bristol Virginia Police Department said he was waiting at the post office when he heard about the bear visiting the emergency room. A hospital employee sent him a photo.
He circulated an e-mail with the picture, a brief description and a sign of relief: “Good thing they weren’t automatic doors!”