From the dark center of the Eagle newsroom, greetings. I'm Gary Catt, executive editor of Eagle Newspapers. I've come to this calling after a career that's swerved through a half-dozen daily newspapers and an ad agency that was once the world's largest. Along the way I've written or edited most everything and an I've guided successful strategies around times of difficulty for Fortune 50 companies. My job here is to make sure that when you pick up your Eagle community newspaper it's a like a walk down main street, spotting faces you know; discovering news you need to know.
So...the DEC killed that bear they treed the other night in the town of Geddes. The official line on this event is forked. On one hand, the DEC argues that the bear was executed because it was known pest, with a history of repeat interactions with people. On the other, the DEC says there may have been an issue with the bear's slow recovery from being tranquilized.
Where's the truth? Hmmmm. In the first explanation, the DEC is left to explain why officers didn't relocate the bear to a wilderness environment after the first couple instances. In the second explanation, it would appear that somebody screwed up, either with the dosage or in the way in which the bear was retrieved. News reports quote officers as saying the bear "climbed" down the tree after being shot with dart containing an acceptable amount of a tranquilizer drug. Another official said that the bear may have been injured during it's 50 mile trek from Waterloo in Seneca County and reacted poorly to the drug.
Either way, the DEC isn't going to emerge from this incident without being criticized.
People in the neighborhood and others across the city were touched by the wayward creature's wanderings in our midst.
The bear wasn't supposed to be killed. This event was shaped almost as a comic drama. The lumbering bear sauntering through a suburban neighborhood. Hysterical school officials afraid one of their charges would end up as lunch. Cops stalking the critter though backyards. It was all pretty humorous, especially when you figure the chances of the bear eating anything beyond garbage and bird food.
I saw this TV program once where hundreds of really frightening and hungry grizzly bears descended on this Alaskan village each year. The villagers set up a kind of bear watch, but the kids went to school and people went to work and none of the bears was killed.
All over TV you can see bears being tranquilized in weird places and circumstances, yet none of them die. The camera person usually gets a good shot of bear butt waddling happily into the woods.
But, our bear died. I'd like to know why. I think others would too.
