Bear Sightings Have Damascus Residents Wary

DAMASCUS, Va. – Town police Lt. Kermit Turner was driving his cruiser through the middle of Damascus when he was startled by the sight of a bear.

“He was laying in the middle of the road, laying on the warm asphalt with a bag of trash between his front paws, digging through it, eating it,” he said Tuesday.

Turner’s encounter with the 200-pound animal is just one in a number of bear sightings reported in and around this Washington County town this spring.

After a rash of bear complaints, town and wildlife officials have scheduled a meeting for 7 p.m. Friday at Town Hall to educate the public on avoiding bear problems.

“A lot of people have had situations where their trash has been torn out of the trash can and just scattered all over the yard, and just several different things like that,” Turner said. “There was one lady who had a little S-10 pickup … and they were putting their trash in it, and a bear had actually knocked the back window out of the truck to get in to it and get a quick and easy meal.”

He said he hasn’t had any reports of aggressive behavior by the animals toward humans.

Bill Bassinger, district wildlife biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said the main purpose of the meeting is to teach people how to deal with bears.

“I’m going to go down there and tell them about black bear biology and how to handle different scenarios and what they can do to help themselves,” Bassinger said of Friday’s meeting. “In the trash scenario, obviously it’s either they keep the trash secure or not to put it out until the morning of the pickup.”

Bassinger said bears come around when they smell an opportunity for a snack – and the top three things that draw them are bird seed, dog food and trash. But compost piles, barbecue grills and beehives also can attract the animals.

“Basically, if it smells like food to a bear, he’s going to check it out,” Bassinger said.

Bears come out of the woods this time of year because their natural food supplies, like wild berries, aren’t quite ready – and after just waking from their long winter’s hibernation, they are hungry.

“In residential areas, it’s the trash, the bird seed. Bird seed is a huge part of their diet,” he said. “Putting your bird feeder out is like opening the door to the salad bar.”

Sara Combs, who lives in the nearby community of Alvarado, said she and her husband had bear trouble about a year ago – but this year, thanks to some simple changes, the bears aren’t bothering them.

“We had put some garbage in the car to take to the dump the next day, and when we got up the following morning, the driver’s side window had been ripped out … there was bear fur on the door and puncture marks in the upholstery and mud everywhere on the steering wheel and the driver’s seat,” Combs said. “We put the trash in the other car and took it out to the dump immediately … and when we got up the next day, the bumper had been ripped off that car, even though the trash had just been in it for 30 minutes or less. There were puncture marks in the top of the trunk.”

She said bears also got into their grill and could be observed 10 feet from the back door eating cat food at 11 a.m.

But after $1,400 worth of damage to their two vehicles, they stopped putting cat food outside and kitchen waste in their compost pile, started cleaning the grill each time they use it and added a small blinking light in their yard that, for some reason, bears don’t like.

She said they keep trash in heavy-duty cans inside a locked garage and don’t put it in the car until they’re ready to take it to the dump. Basically, she said, they’ve removed every source of food that could attract bears to their yard.

“I’m sure there are bears in these woods, but they’re staying away,” Combs said. “They’re not bothering us anymore.”

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