Baby black bear’s rescue is just right

An orphaned baby black bear cub’s unexpected arrival in Minerva moves a family to take action to help ensure its survival

By Leigh Hornbeck

Trout Brook Road in Minerva, Essex County is surrounded by forest. Trees and wild animals far outnumber people throughout the little town where I grew up and where my family operates a business. It is not unusual to see deer in the fields and turkey and grouse in the woods along with all the usual animals – skunks, porcupine, raccoons, squirrels and chipmunks.

We spot the occasional great blue heron fishing in our pond and Canada geese resting during migration seasons. We’ve found fawns napping in the cattails while their mothers graze, and we hear coyotes talk to each other in the night and owls hooting overhead. Still, when a bear cub showed up in early November, it was a surprise. Black bears are plentiful in the Adirondacks, but they generally stay far away from people. It’s rarely a good outcome for the bear when they get too close. When I was a kid, going to the town dump to watch bears root around in the trash was a local pastime, but those days are over.

My mother, Ann Hornbeck, saw the bear in the field and assumed the mother was nearby, but the cub stayed close to the house, alone. A fawn left alone is no cause for alarm and should be left alone. Its mother will come back for it. But mama bears keep a close eye on their young and object when someone comes between them and their offspring. It’s an old maxim human mothers often borrow: don’t come between a mother and her cubs, it’s dangerous. 

Hearing my mom’s description, I thought the bear was too small to survive the winter alone, but I wasn’t sure we should intervene. Growing up where nature dominates, I learned a few simple rules: respect wildlife, admire from a distance, let nature take its course. Hunting is not a tradition in our family, but we have found most hunters to have a deep respect for wildlife.

The bear, it turns out, had been bopping around Trout Brook Road for weeks. We found out our neighbors had been feeding the bear wild apples, which were still plentiful, but soon they wouldn’t be – what then? Should we hope for the best, knowing the bear could die? What if it was hit by a car? 

My husband, Josh Trombley,  commutes to Hornbeck Boats each day from our house in Saratoga County. The shop is next to my mother’s house. The day after Mom spotted the bear, it was sitting by the mailbox when Josh arrived at work as if it was waiting for him, saying, “what now?” 

“This bear will never survive the winter by itself,” Josh said when he called me. “We have to do something.” We called the state Department of Conservation for advice, then North Country Wild Care, a network of volunteers who have been trained how to handle injured and orphaned wild animals. Typically they help injured opossums, birds, racoons and squirrels. An orphaned bear is unusual, we were told, and requires special handling. Only one place in eastern NY takes bears, Friends of the Feathered and Furry Wild Care Center in Hunter. Fortunately, FFF had room for another cub.

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The first step in a rescue, I learned in a phone call, was to get a picture of the bear so the wildlife rehabilitators could decide if it was small enough to rescue. DEC doesn’t allow rehabbers to take bears that weigh more than a certain amount, although the limit wasn’t clear at first. We heard 40 pounds, 30 pounds and 25 pounds. It was hard to tell under the fur, but the cub looked like it weighed 30 pounds at most. We learned later that all black bear cubs are born in January or February while their mothers hibernate, and by fall, they should weigh 50 to 60 pounds to get through the winter.

Satisfied by the pictures the bear was as small as we were saying it was, a wildlife rehabilitator brought a cage-like trap baited with stinky wet cat food to the shop. Josh recognized her as Trish Marki, who runs Silent Wings Raptors. Our 12-year-old son, Devlin, was fascinated by raptors when he was little and absorbed everything Trish had to say at programs about the birds. A day after Trish dropped off the trap, our furry visitor was in temporary custody. The bear, a male, it turns out, weighed 21 pounds. He will spend the winter at the Friends of the Feathered and Furry Wildlife Center. Within days, FFF posted pictures of the cub on their Facebook page alongside another orphaned bear, followed by a video a week later showing the cubs had already put on weight. The people at FFF will care for the animals while keeping their distance, so the bears can be returned to the wild. It would be the best possible outcome for me. It felt right to rescue the bear with the advice of experts and to jump the boundary between wild and domestic, but it will feel as if a good deed has been completed if our bear forgets us and we never see it again.