As we head into the dog days of summer on the North Shore, another animal has been making the news lately: bears
Last week, a large female bear lumbered into a mall parking lot and got comfortable up a tree (at least, until conservation officers arrived with a tranquilizer gun).
Prior to that, another bear sauntered into a laundry room to eat some popcorn, a second sashayed through an open front door on St. Andrews and the third broke a garage door where some food was stored.
That bears are part of the North Shore landscape should not be a huge surprise. Over the years we have moved farther into their territory. Bears have a keen sense of smell and doubtless prefer an easy meal to an afternoon of hard foraging in the bush.
For the bears, however, this rarely works out to a good end.
This week, another bear was on the losing end of such an interaction when it startled a 93-year-old woman by rummaging through her kitchen fridge.
This time, conservation officers destroyed the bear after noting human garbage like plastic, tinfoil and bandages in the scat it had left.
That's a sad reflection of our continued unwillingness to ensure our own waste doesn't become another creature's undoing despite decades of public education.
Bears that invade houses in search of food have learned that behaviour from too many of us who didn't pay attention.
It's never a pleasant job for conservation officers to destroy the animals they are charged with protecting.
When they do, we all bear some responsibility for pulling the trigger.
