Hastings Middle School had quite the Wednesday morning. In the early morning, the middle school experienced a
power outage that only affected their site. Xcel Energy worked to address the issue. The power outage didn’t affect the phones or internet; however, there was a disruption to the vestibule doors, and the outage delayed the start to MCA testing.
But that wasn’t all; a black bear was spotted near the school. Local law enforcement and the MN DNR monitored the bear as it moved away from the school. According to an email from ISD 200 Middle School Principal Ryan Wynn, the presence of the bear caused a slight disruption to the school operation. Phys. Ed. classes were moved inside, and all outdoor activities were put on hold.
Principal Wynn wrote, “After this morning’s power outage, we were hoping for a quieter rest of the day, but it appears nature had other plans.”
KDWA connected with Steve Chihak, MNDNR conservation officer, who is monitoring the bear.
With the presence of the black bear, Officer Chihak offers this advice for the public.
“The primary concern right now is to stay away. Stay away. I know it’s a novelty. Everybody likes to see it. Beautiful animals are really cool animals, and I get it, but to be safe, for this animal, to feel safe, to come down and move on, we want people to stay away from the area. And then, you know, bird feeders, unlike deer, bears can climb to get bird feeders. Bring in your bird feeders at night, is what we tell people do, and then put them out in the day. That way, when the bears are out at night, they don’t find the food, they’ll move on. Don’t feed your pets outside. That’s another important thing, feed your pets inside. Or if you do feed them outside, make sure that once the once your animals have been fed, bring all that stuff inside. Garbage cans, it’s a little more difficult. We have a lot of the plastic garbage cans here. They’re easy to get into. We don’t lock ours, we’re not in a bear-wise community like in the mountains, where they actually can lock their garbage cans. I would say, you know, pull them into the garage. I know a lot of people don’t like to do that with smells and things like that, but that would be an important or an effective way to prevent that is to pull the garage in at night time, and then you can put them out during the day. Usually, these bears aren’t out during the day, but we’re at that phase, you know, they call it hyperphagia, where they’re trying to put on a lot of weight really quickly, because they burned up so much resources during the winter months. So those are things that we tell people to do.”
And so what’s the best case scenario for this bear, just wait until night and then it’s going to wander off?
“Likely, that’s what’s going to happen. Unfortunately, it picked kind of a bad time. If it was four in the afternoon, I’d say we’re really good, but we’ve got a long time. It’s going to get hot today, and that’s usually why they’re out there for the route, because it’s warmer out. It’s in a shaded area right now, in a shaded tree, it’ll probably stay there all day, and then hopefully at night, it’ll come down and then move on. So that’s the ideally, ideal thing that we want to happen, is that it comes down on its own, and then it leaves the area. And as long as people are practicing those bear-wise things with food and things like that, I think that the bear will be fine. What we don’t want is crowds to show up. The bear gets nervous. We’re taking precautions with the elementary schools, we’re in contact with the principal, superintendent and the local police department. Hastings PD is going to put something out on Facebook, so we’ll just kind of keep it low key. I get it, they’re cool animals. Everybody wants to see the animal, but if we do care about these animals, we want to stay away.”
What would it come to if the bear does come down and there’s a crowd, what could happen?
“I don’t believe the bear will come down if there’s a crowd. What I do believe is that we could have an unintended encounter when it does come out down and there are people around, maybe not here, maybe it moves to a particular area then runs into somebody, likely they’re going to just run away. But we don’t want a situation where I have to intervene, or the local PD has to intervene, because in those situations, wildlife always loses, and I don’t like that.“
So be wise, stay away from the bear and move on with your day?
“Yes, yes. And be and be thankful that we have critters like that in the area, so you do have opportunities to see those things. So they’re really magical creatures. They really are.”
The MNDNR will continue to monitor the bear, and if the bear comes down from the tree, the MNDNR and the police department will monitor the bear as it moves out of town.
[Click the soundbite for the full report.]