It was one of those rare warm sunny days, the office was quiet, and then the call came in – there's a bear on the loose!
After racing over to the reported site, one journalist stayed in the car preparing the camera, while the other got out, approached the family of four walking their dog and politely asked, “Have you seen a bear wandering around town?”
The mother responded in haste, “Bear, no. What bear? There's a bear on the loose?”
“No need to panic ma'am. We are looking for a single baby black bear.”
The gentleman interceded. “Oh, ya lost your bear,” he said, chuckling at his own wit.
“No no. We got a call at the office claiming there was a baby bear roaming around these parts and the boss sent us out to snap a photo of it.”
“Oh I see. Well, we ain't seen no bears ‘round here. Sorry ‘bout your luck, pal. Big luck with the search.”
The family kept on their way, as did the two journalists.
Back in the car, down an alley, through a puddle and around a willow bush, they spotted a police officer in her cruiser. She appeared to be searching vigorously for a bear.
The journalist got out of the car with a camera in his hand. The police cruiser roared up to him.
“Are you Fish and Wildlife?” hollered the officer through her open window.
“Pardon?”
“Fish and Wildlife. Are you a Fish and Wildlife officer?”
He was about to respond with, “Clearly I am, now where's the bear?”
But instead, the incessant, seemingly nonsensical questioning threw off his thinking for a moment and he simply responded, “No.”
Perhaps it was his Indiana Jones-like T-shirt, or the combination of a compact car, camera in hand and lack of uniform that led the police officer to believe the journalist was a fish or wildlife.
Or maybe the officer was just being facetious.
“If you are not Fish and Wildlife, I'm going to have to ask you to get back in your car and vacate the area. There is a bear on the loose and we have no idea what state of mind it is in. It could be a danger to the public. So please, sir. If you would …”
“Clearly I am not fish nor wildlife,” he responded. “But I am with the newspaper and we simply would like to get a photo of the bear, not disturb you or it. We plan to keep our distance. It's what the zoom lens is for.”
“If you are not Fish and Wildlife you must leave the area.”
The journalists drove off to look for a better angle around a different willow bush.
A block away, two police cruisers had the bear surrounded in a 100-square-foot plot of trees and shrubs, but the cub was still not visible.
The journalists continued to search for a better angle to photograph the bear the moment it was flushed from the woods.
They found the perfect spot right across the street from the potential action and parked on what appeared to be an alley. It was also far enough away from the officers to avoid further confrontations.
As they parked, the journalist asked his partner, “If there is a full-size stop sign at the end of this road, does that mean it's meant for cars?”
Before she answered a peace officer pulled up.
“What are you doing parked there?” he yelled from his driver's seat.
“Waiting for the bear,” the journalist yelled back.
“You can't park on the trail.”
“Trail?”
“Yeah, it's a quad trail. Get off there!”
Frustrated at the inability to perform his job, the journalist hollered back, “Quad?”
“Move your car now!” the officer demanded as he drove off.
The two journalists stayed put for another 20 minutes with no sign of a bear or another peace officer.
Unfortunately, that day they were never able to see a piece of Alberta's magnificent wildlife that sadly wandered into human-only territory.
And in an even more tragic turn of events, the journalists, and anyone else for that matter, never will see this bear, as it was shot and killed just hours after the futile search began.
