Bear Essentials

There’s a rogue bear roaming the woods and neighborhoods of South County this fall. Suspected of killing four sheep, the Eastern black bear has been spotted crossing Ministerial Road in South Kingstown but has so far eluded and outwitted state environmental officials.

A week or so ago, DEM set up a trap filled with doughnuts and meat, long a Rhode Island staple. (At least it’s in the local culinary tradition of anything goes with dough. Consider the chourico sticks at Sip ‘n’ Dip in Bristol – essentially a cruller of fried dough surrounding a spicy Portuguese sausage – exhibit A.) The bear swiped the doughnuts but left the meat hanging, backing out of the trap while showing a healthy skepticism toward free carcass for the taking.

So many questions remain: Were the doughnuts honey-dipped? Did DEM cheap out with day-old leftovers from Dunkin’ Donuts? Or did they come from Allie’s, the legendary North Kingstown doughnut shop and Rhody pilgrimage site whose founder, sadly, passed away a week ago?

Here’s what we know: This particular bear likes doughnuts and sheep. So we at Half Shell humbly propose an idea for the next trap: “Mutton doughnut.” Yum. Great sheep taste in a deep-fat fried pastry. What bear could resist that?

Bears haven’t been around much in these parts since the Colonial days, when settlers clear-cut the forests, hunting them out and driving them away. But they’ve returned in small numbers in recent years, attracted by the state’s second-growth forests and a chance to stretch their legs away from the crowded conifers of Connecticut. The last time a bear got this much attention for visiting Rhode Island was in 2008. That summer I wrote an article for the autumn issue of South County Living describing the frenzy:

One day in late May, a black bear crossed over the Connecticut border into Rhode Island, carving a swath through upland forest and along rivers, blissfully unaware of the invisible line that separates Nutmeg from Ocean State culture and its own impending celebrity. The bear was hungry, quite likely just out of hibernation, and looking to set up his territory and find a mate. It wandered through the Foster-Glocester-Scituate region of northern Rhode Island and meandered in a southeasterly route into Coventry and, eventually, South County, where it was spotted Memorial Day weekend on Liberty Lane in West Kingston.

On May 27, the young bear, estimated at two years old and about 130 pounds, swam from the South Kingstown side of Narrow River to the Narragansett side, where it indulged in a breakfast buffet of birdfeeders and trashcans in the North End. But its visit to Mettatuxet started a frenzy, and before long the bear, dubbed “Fluffy” by the media, was dodging the wildlife paparazzi of camera-toting residents, TV crews and uniformed environmental law enforcement.

The saga of “Fluffy” lasted about a week, as new sightings were reported on television and radio, in local papers and in various blogs. The CVS/pharmacy in Wakefield hired someone in a bear suit to stand near Main Street with a sign urging shoppers to purchase “bear necessities.” Narragansett resident Jeanne Vicario printed up T-shirts that read “Where’s the Bear?” and “Mettatuxet Bear Patrol” and sold them at local bars and stores, donating a portion of the proceeds to the Sierra Club.

The giddy response to the South County Bear was a spontaneous reaction to the rare sighting of a totemic animal that, in the age before the settlers arrived, once foraged freely in these forests. Bears disappeared from the local landscape for hundreds of years, only recently showing up once again as a blip on the Rhode Island radar during the past decade. Narragansett Deputy Chief Dean Hoxsie told The South County Independent that he’d never seen or heard of a bear in the area in 24 years of law enforcement work.

Two years later, there's a new bear in town. Good news to those of us who believe in cultivating a little wildness wherever we can in an age of suburban overgrowth and digital overload. Then again, never been mauled by one. Might whistle a different tune then.

Leading to this week’s totally unrelated question: What is your favorite Thanksgiving ritual? (Bonus points if you can work doughnuts into the answer.)