A small black bear spent the night in a treetop – and had a long sleep-in on Sunday morning.
Terry Ruth Eissfeldt and her husband Terrence were in their Hyde Creek home, an east-Vancouver Island spot overlooking the Broughton Archipelago, Saturday evening (May 30) when Terrence noticed a kerfuffle in a nearby tree.
Terry grabbed her camera and captured video of a yearling bear at the top of a mature evergreen tree.
The young bruin was eating something at the top of what the Eissfeldts call the eagle tree – which is frequented by eagles, but there isn’t an active nest there this year, so it wasn’t eating eagle eggs, Terry said.
“I think he was eating eagle poop. I watch them poop all the time.”
And then a large adult bear emerged through the branches at the top, forcing the yearling to back up.
“Oh my goodness, it might fall!” Terry exclaims in the video. Amazingly, the youngster hangs on as the top branches bow under its weight.
They first thought the larger bear was the mother, but later realized it was probably a mature male chasing the yearling off its territory. They’d seen the boar around the week prior, gorging on grass in their hilly yard.
The adult bear soon climbed down and wandered off.
However, the yearling got cozy in the treetop and slept until late Sunday morning. The Eissfeldts watched the bear wake up, turn around and resettle a few times in the morning to resume its treetop snooze.
“All of a sudden, he popped up, sat up, yawned, looked around and then just started climbing down. It was like, ‘Okay, I’ve slept in long enough.’ Typical teenager, right?”
Do you have something to add to this story or something else we should report on? Email:zoe.ducklow@blackpress.ca.
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