‘Shocked the heck out of us.’ Bully bear tried to steal bird feed in Mooresville yard
When her cats acted strangely in the early morning dark Friday, Denise Hegarty didn’t think much of it. Her pets paced back and forth and whined at the back door, she said.
She realized something odd was up when she went into her yard off Shinnville Road in Mooresville later that morning to check on her chickens. Iron shepherd’s hooks holding up the family’s bird feeder on a pole were bent to the ground.
“What would do that?” she wondered. “Even if five raccoons were on them, they wouldn’t bend, because we had tied two of them together.”
Still later that morning, the family decided to check their trail camera, ”and there he was!!” Hegarty told The Charlotte Observer in a Nextdoor message this week. “Shocked the heck out of us.”
The camera revealed a young male black bear trying to get at the seed in their feeder, the first time Hegarty ever saw a bear in the backyard.
Welcome to bear sighting season in the Charlotte area.
This time of year, black bears are just passing through the region on their way elsewhere, state Wildlife Resources Commission enforcement officers say.
Black bears are more likely to appear in the Charlotte area in June, sometimes in May and more rarely April and March, Sampson Parker Jr., the only state Wildlife Resources Commission enforcement officer based in Mecklenburg County, told the Observer last year.
Remain calm if you see a bear
In late March 2022, three black bears showed up in woods near a Huntersville woman’s home and her friendly dog wanted to play with them, the Observer reported at the time. “Don’t freak out,” Parker urged homeowners after that sighting. “I wouldn’t say they are harmless, but they’re not aggressive.”
N.C. wildlife officers typically don’t respond to such a sighting unless a bear is being a nuisance, such as rummaging through trash cans and refusing to leave, he said.
The Shinnville Road sighting prompted a mini-outcry on Nextdoor that over-development is to blame for homeowner encounters with bears, coyote and other wildlife.
“They’re taking their woods away,” a woman said. “They don’t have any safe place no more. They keep building up and take over their homeland.”
“We need to leave well enough alone and stop tearing down their habitats,” another woman wrote.
Hegarty said she doesn’t know how long the bear stayed in her yard.
“We think he ran off when he broke one of our glass bird feeders and cut himself, because there was blood on the glass when we went to pick it up.” she said.
Past black bear sightings
Bears have a history of traipsing through the Charlotte area.
On June 30, 2020, a black bear camped out in a tree in the front yard of a home in Mooresville, McClatchy News reported at the time.
On May 31, 2020, a 13-year-old Charlotte girl calmly shot video of a black bear meandering through her family’s University-area backyard as her mom acknowledged going “hysterical,” the Observer reported at the time.
That same weekend, a wopman said she and her husband spotted one while driving along Prairie Rose Lane in Huntersville’s StoneGate Farms neighborhood.
If you encounter a bear
Black bear attacks on humans are rare, as the bears are seldom aggressive, according to BearWise.org, which the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission links to on its black bear site.
Stay still if you see a bear before the animal spots you, BearWise advises. Admire the bear, then walk quietly away, according to the site.
If a bear sees you, never run, BearWise urges. Instead, “back away slowly in the opposite direction and wait for the bear to leave,” according to the site.