Aggressive bears wreaking havoc

TRAPPER CREEK — Problem bears have made quite a showing this summer, tearing off the wall of a travel trailer, smashing open a feed shed and, most recently, climbing through the window of a pizzeria.

The pizza bear was shot and killed inside the eatery.

“I’ve had many calls on bears, both black and brown, in the Trapper Creek area,” said Alaska State Wildlife Trooper Dan Valentine.

Which, he said, is saying something. Trapper Creek isn’t the type of community where residents will call for a trooper unless the bear is really not behaving himself.

“A bear wandering through your yard in Trapper creek is normal. A bear tearing down your shed isn’t normal,” Valentine said.

He said the travel trailer was broken into on Aug. 12. The bear ripped the side off of the trailer — a tow-behind model that had been used as a place to store goat and cat food, among other things, near a home on Adventure Way in the Petersville Road area. The call about the feed shed came the next day, Aug. 13. And then on Aug. 15 came the call from Trapper Creek Pizza Pub/Angela’s Heaven.

The owner of that pub, Angela Sunakorn, said she was there that morning making up pizza dough for the day when, around 10:05, she received a phone call. As she took the call she looked out the window and saw a black bear wander by.

It’s not the first time she’s had bears near the restaurant. But she got on the business intercom to let her business partner, Klaus Lech, know the bear was around. Lech runs a machine shop and rafting business on the property, but he also has chickens at his nearby home.

Then the bear came back, Sunakorn said. It stood in the window, looking at her. She did what she normally does when a bear seems curious. She screamed, waved her arms and tried to scare it off.

“Usually they look at you, tap the window maybe, but then go,” she said. But this bear had something else in mind. “He looked at me and he broke the window, came inside.”

So she got back on the intercom to call Lech for help. Lech had apparently sensed something; he was already on his way over with a shotgun when she called the second time.

He fired a slug from the gun. It went through the bear and into the wall above the sink. But Sunakorn said the bear didn’t die right away. He scampered across her counter, turning on all the beer taps and bending some out of place, before finally falling down and dying in the dining room.

“I was very lucky and I’m very grateful to be still alive,” she said.

Really, all she was left after the ordeal was a mess, but it was quite a mess. The bear’s blood squirted all over and she had let those beer taps run for quite awhile until she was certain the bear was dead.

“I just had blood and glass and beer all over,” she said.

Valentine was the trooper who responded to take away the bear’s hide and skull. He said that kind of behavior is highly unusual, especially for a black bear. He has ruled the killing a legitimate defense of life and property.

As for how residents can avoid similar bear encounters, he said the standard advice still applies, though with an extra dollop of caution.

“We’ve told people in Trapper Creek to keep their livestock within electric fences and try to put their food for any animals in the most secure shed possible,” he said. “Make sure there’s no garbage or anything outside that the bears could get into that would make them want to come back.”

As for why bears are acting up this summer? Valentine said he doesn’t have any theories. It doesn’t seem like they’d need to resort to any kind of desperate measures — there are fish in the water — and, anyway, none of these bears were successful in getting food.

“They did not eat the food once they tore into the travel trailer and the food in the feed shed was in those sealed twist-top (canisters),” which prevented the bears from accessing it, Valentine said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.