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We aren’t moving into the bears’ habitat. They’re moving into ours. So are the coyotes and everything else.

July 7th, 2015 · 4 Comments

I was inspired to write this story because of my own dealings with the critter invasion.

Like Sheila and Carol in this story, I feel like life has become a non-stop low-level battle against wildlife. I’ve had much of it, though not (I’ve discovered thankfully) rats eating my car wires. But rats elsewhere (one strolled into the house last summer when we had the doors open all day), raccoons (a family that produces a litter of four every year, who eat all my cherries), squirrels (who ate through the plaster of my bathroom ceiling, causing chunks to fall on our heads), skunks, silverfish, mice, bedbugs twice (two words only: diatomeceous earth), clothes moths forever, ants.

It wasn’t like this when I grew up in North Van. I don’t remember ever seeing a mouse.

I went to find out what happened, checking in with some researchers in Chicago, Washington, London, and here. This is what they said.

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  • Silly Season

    Here are my stories:

    –Something growling then killing something else (complete with pitiful death throes cries) across my back alley late at night. Twice, in the last two months
    –Having a coyote juvenile trot closely behind me on a mid morning Southlands walk a few weeks ago
    –Watching an eagle with incredible wing span cover a squirrel on the ground near the Planetarium, and then spiral slowly upwards and away. I won’t ever forget the look on the squirrels face–it knew it was done. Pure Pixar expression, with poor little eyes bulging in fear
    –Carrying a stick and a few stones with me on my hikes on Quadra Island. Two wolf packs (one wolf took a woman’s dog off the trail IN TOWN last year) and now a juvenile male grizzly bear (!) have decided that island life is for them. Just a short swim, from mainland to island to island.
    –Rats, everywhere.
    –The nasty, nasty NASTY crow who is engaging in a personal vendetta against me right now, when I try to walk up to my front door. I dream of baking him in a pie–along with 4 and 19 of his closest friends.

  • IanS

    Growing up in North Van, I remember a series of ongoing battles with the racoons trying to get at the garbage. Racoons won most of the time.

    Living downtown now, my only encounters with wildlife are the occasional coyote sighting while jogging along the seawall and, of course, the repeated attacks by that damn crow at Richards and Robson.

  • The Goat

    Let’s be clear – in North Vancouver Canyon Heights was build pretty much to its present limit in the early 1950s, Upper Lonsdale in the early 1960s, Dempsey/Braemar in the mid-1980s, Upper Lynn Valley in the late 60s/early 70s, Blueridge in the late 50s/early 60s and Parkgate in the early 80s. Can’t remember when Deep Cove was developed but it was pre-Blueridge with the exception of Panorama Drive which was early 80s if memory serves.

    My point is that with the POSSIBLE exception of Dempsey / Braemar all of these areas were built out long before the lifetime of any bear now living and in most cases before the current generation of bear’s parents.

    [The main reason our cat is an indoor kitty is that North Vancouver has lots of raccoons which are a far bigger danger to a cat or dog than the occasional bear.]

    So whose neighborhoods are these? Sure as heck isn’t the bears.

  • penguinstorm

    Are you suggesting that we should just take over the entire ecosystem, wildlife be damned? Perhaps we should sign some form of treaty with the bears dividing the territory? How much would we leave the coyotes? The racoons?