Tip to Tail / the Tale of Bob and the New York City Woman

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I'm a big-city boy, about as far from being Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett as a guy could be, but living in Northampton -- well, Nature and the Wilderness have done me the honor and delight of coming to me, and as the years go by, even City Boy Bob figures out a few things.

Our most startling neighbors are these bears. I'm most familiar with my backyard neighbor Molly the Single Mother Bear, who has new cubs every spring.

The fathers are all bums who have their fun in the woods and then desert poor Molly long before she gives birth to her cubs each late winter or early spring. They need to take personal responsibility. It's really a shame and a scandal. But don't worry about Molly and the Cubs -- Molly is a remarkably plucky, smart, tough mom, and doesn't need any stupid, nasty male bear to take care of her family.

I'm pretty sure this is Molly's daughter. She's smaller than Molly and she has no collar. (Molly has a collar. If you see a car driving around slowly with some person leaning out the window aiming an old-fashioned rabbit-ears TV antenna, that's a bear tracker.)

About six years ago, Molly found safety in the woods in the middle of our residential block, probably in a moment of human-encounter panic as she was crossing streets to get from forest patch to forest patch. The woods in the middle of our block have a little stream, and undergrowth so thick and so wild that almost nobody (except little kids, and only the most adventurous and most foolish of them, like I was) ever goes in there, so Molly decided it was a perfect place to stake out a territory and raise a family.

("Perfect" is stretching it ... but it's worked out remarkably well, far better than my worries for Molly and her cubs.)

Oh, and the birdfeeders -- the human neighbors who surround Molly's territory put out an all-year-round free buffet for Molly and her cubs. Bears who leave the deep woods and settle in residential neighborhoods stop hibernating, which is triggered by winter's food shortage. Molly and other residential bears never run out of food, as long as the humans keep taking delight in feeding and looking at the wild birds all year round. So residential bears stay active all year round.

One of Molly's first cubs, Todd, grew into a big dufus oafish teenage boy bear, and that's when Molly kicked him out of her woods and made him find his own territory. Little cubs obey mom's every command and follow her around very closely while she teaches them the tricks they need to know to survive.

But when they get so big that they stop obeying mom, and start sassing mom, mom kicks them out -- quite bluntly -- and makes them start their own independent life. We see Todd now and then crossing neighborhood streets, but he knows not to stray into Molly's woods.

This is probably these cubs' first lesson in where and how to find food in neighborhood dumpsters, garbage cans, and birdfeeders. It's very rare to see any bears in broad daylight, so this female is probably somewhat inexperienced, certainly a lot less savvy than Molly.

Molly never gets in trouble with the human neighbors and the police. We've seen Molly in backyards after sunset teaching her cubs to climb backyard fences and knock down birdfeeders. It's wonderful to hear her growl and snarl at a slow or disobedient cub, and it's wonderful to hear a momentarily lost or stuck cub howl piteously for momma to rescue him.

The state wildlife bear expert says he and his colleagues very scrupulously don't give the bears names, and only refer to them by their radio collar numbers. When you become familiar enough with a bear's comings and goings to give a bear a name, the bear becomes like a pet or like a good neighbor or even a family member, and there's a terrible grief when the bear comes to a bad end. Which is often what happens to bears who drift out of the safe, deep woods for the free buffet in human neighborhoods.

I think I'll name Molly's daughter Janey, and her two cubs Beyonce and Leonardo. It's a big mistake, but I can't help myself.

Again, the bear measurements are based on the sidewalk width, 26 inches.

The Tale of Bob and the New York City Woman

Many years ago I accompanied a young woman from her first post-college job in downtown New York City to the only apartment she could afford, which was in Spanish Harlem. She was born, grew up, and went to college in New York City.

It was early on a hot summer evening, around sundown. We walked from her subway stop about two blocks to her apartment building. There were ambulance and police sirens, people screaming, sidewalk prostitutes and drug dealers offering to sell us marijuana and cocaine. In the distance, toward the East River, I could hear occasional pistol shots.

The front steps of her old brownstone building were occupied by all sorts of colorfully-attired people doing all sorts of colorful things and making all sorts of noises, human and battery-powered, many of them harsh and loud. There was no doorman. The entry door had a lock, but old and not very formidable. We walked down a dark hallway -- all the lightbulbs were burned out or missing -- to an ancient, tiny elevator which, by a miracle, was working. Inside there was only room for us, or for one young woman and one perfect stranger. The elevator creaked and groaned to the fifth floor.

She unlocked her apartment door and when we were inside, locked us in with several locks, chains, and finally a formidable steel cross bar. Her windows had steel security grills on them. She went into the tiny kitchen and made coffee, and then we sat down in the tiny one-room apartment. There was no air-conditioner, and through the open windows I could still hear the sounds of sirens and screaming and occasional small-caliber gunfire.

I told her I was going camping in the woods that weekend.

Worry and alarm filled her face.

"Aren't you afraid of bears?" she asked.