The Black Bear, Monrovia’s 500-Pound Gorilla

Just a few miles from the local Starbucks, not far from the day spa in Monrovia, the city’s unofficial bear tracker steers her pickup truck down a winding street lined with incense cedar trees, wildflowers and wood-frame houses. Twenty miles east of downtown Los Angeles, Kim Bosell is scanning the roads and foothills for Little Girl, a 225-pound black bear and neighborhood regular. On this sunny morning, Little Girl is likely to amble right down the paved street and crawl under a house for a nap or steal loquats from a neighbor’s tree. “We’re liable to run into the bear today,” says Bosell, who works for the city’s parks division. “She’s always up here. This is her territory.”

Bosell tracks the movements of bears in Monrovia, studying their habits and personalities as if they were gang members, she jokes. She knows them by their distinctive markings and the names given to them by park workers or residents. If she sees a bear, Bosell--5 feet 4 and a fresh-faced 30--will run after it. Sometimes the bear will flee back into the foothills; other times, the bear and Bosell will square off. It’s an uneasy match: Black bears can weigh more than 500 pounds.

From June to November, homeowners near the foothills expect to see bears lumbering into this city of 37,000 people, where the median price for a single-family home is $315,000. But this summer, bear sightings are up, probably because of the long dry spell, city officials say. Bears and other wildlife head down from the foothills that abut the city and the nearby Angeles National Forest, presumably frustrated by the search for berries, grass and water in their own habitat. One coyote wandered into Monrovia and bit through a sprinkler line to get to water.

Earlier this month, as a temporary response to the prolonged lack of rain, city officials decided to try a new tactic to discourage wildlife visits. Firefighters positioned six donated water troughs along hillside trails, hoping that the extra water source will keep thirsty animals from venturing elsewhere. The 156-gallon aluminum containers will be filled periodically by firefighters and monitored by Bosell, who will note the water level along with any nearby paw prints and droppings.

The bears simply are part of the everyday consciousness of homeowners in the foothills, and have come to the fore recently as TV news crews have headed to Monrovia to capture the strange sight of a bear lingering for hours in a tree.

Most residents adjust to the bear intrusions, installing motion detectors that alert them when one is near, keeping pepper spray on hand with the safety latch unhooked and devising ways to thwart garbage scavengers (one homeowner freezes food scraps such as salmon skins and chicken bones to get rid of the scent).

For the most part, the city considers the bears with wary affection, delighted by the connection to the wilderness, mindful of potential problems. “It’s a long-term relationship,” Bosell says. “That’s just it. It’s not going to end. It’s always going to be something we’re dealing with, and we just have to keeping coming up with new ways to do it.”

Even residents who never see bears in Monrovia can’t miss signs of their presence in the city. Check out the telephone poles, which bears use as scratching posts. The bears back up against the post to rub an itch, leaving behind tufts of fur. On the night before garbage pickups are scheduled, overturned trash cans litter some streets.

A statue of Monrovia’s most famous bear, Samson, was dedicated in March at the city’s Canyon Park nature center. In 1994 the 500-pound bear became famous for taking regular dips in a Monrovia resident’s hot tub, apparently to soothe his arthritis. State Department of Fish and Game officials captured Samson, who was deemed a nuisance and scheduled to be killed.

But in response to a public outcry, then-Gov. Pete Wilson decided to spare the bear, who died last year at the Orange County Zoo. The Samson statue is “dedicated to the protection, understanding and respect for wildlife and their habitat.”

Ever since a homeowner’s videotape of Samson made the news--he looked like a big, happy kid, splashing around--residents have had a heightened sensitivity about issues related to their environment. But city officials also are careful to draw a line. Two years ago, in an effort to make sure that locals do not encourage visits by bears and other animals, the City Council approved an ordinance prohibiting the feeding of wildlife. And city fliers remind residents that if bears get used to digging through trash cans, the animals could become bolder and break into homes for food, for instance. Fish and Game officials kill aggressive bears that could threaten humans.

“Nobody wants to see that,” says Paul Larsen, 39, a board member of the Monrovia Mountains Conservancy. “There is no call whatsoever to have radical efforts to eliminate the bear problem....The people of Monrovia are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure there’s a peaceful coexistence.”

Larsen, who lives with his wife and two small children near the foothills, isn’t scared of the “very polite” bear that recently pulled a bag out of his garbage can and poked around for trash without making a huge mess. Although the family is visited by other wild animals, “the bears are more interesting because of all the folklore that goes along with the bear. And they look fuzzy and cuddly. Of course they’re not, but they have that sort of a mystique about them.”

In July 2000, 77% of the city’s voters supported a $9.5-million property tax to help buy the adjoining hillsides for a wilderness preserve. The preserve is expected to total 1,100 acres, protecting an uninterrupted wildlife corridor from the national forest and keeping 81 potential new homes off the foothills--the habitat from which the bears wander.

In a typical season, Monrovia reports more bear sightings than any other city in Los Angeles County, city officials say. Maybe the bears are tempted by the natural springs and the trees that are laden with avocados, plums and peaches, Bosell says. Or maybe, she speculates, the bears simply are skirting the housing developments that are creeping higher and higher into the neighboring foothills of the San Gabriel Valley.

At any rate, this summer Bosell is spending about 25% of her time on the bears, up from past years because of the increase in sightings. Bosell, who is based at Canyon Park in the foothills, has been fielding more requests to drop by homes and recommend ways that residents can minimize intrusions by bears. Some homeowners, for instance, board up the space under their decks, the kind of dark, cool area that bears like. Once, Bosell found that a bear had tucked away six months’ worth of trash beneath someone’s deck.

Bosell also is giving more talks than usual about bear behavior to groups such as the city’s mail carriers. Parents in particular ask how dangerous the animals are, Bosell says. City officials say no bear has ever attacked a person in Monrovia. A female bear might try to defend her cubs, but otherwise, bears usually show no interest in people. “The bears aren’t walking around wanting to eat your kids for dinner,” Bosell says.

Police haven’t totaled their nightly bear calls, but sightings appear to be up, says Capt. Terry Dochnahl. On some nights, residents report two or three sightings. “Rarely is there a night that we won’t get a call,” Dochnahl says. (State Department of Fish and Game officials do not have statewide tallies yet either, a spokesman says.)

Often, by the time the police show up, the bear has moved on. If it’s still hanging around, officers will try to scare it off by shooting it with a stinging beanbag round that also makes a loud noise. And police sometimes turn to Bosell for help.

“She’s an invaluable resource,” Dochnahl says. “She’s much more knowledgeable about the wildlife than we are in the Police Department.”

On this afternoon, Bosell drives to the city’s northeast side to check a “bear-be-gone” trash can that she left on a neighbor’s driveway. The can is baited with an aromatic treat such as a roll of pork doused with liquid smoke and rigged to shoot pepper spray when a bear reaches for the offering. This time, though, it looks like only raccoons and ants have gotten into the bait bag.

The homeowner, Susan Motander, says she doesn’t resent the bears’ dropping by her three-acre property once a week or so. “I moved into the wilderness,” says Motander, who inherited her 900-square-foot redwood house from her grandmother. “So I have to accept the fact there will be wild animals. I have to live with them.” And she can’t let her guard down, the way she did one hot day last May.

Motander, 47, had left the back door open and the screen door shut. She heard what she thought was the sound of clicking noises on the kitchen floor. Her husband wasn’t home. Oh, that’s the dog, she thought, heading to the kitchen--where she came face to face with a bear. Motander remembered what Bosell had told her about bear encounters: “Be brave and look big.” So she screamed the only thing she could think of: “You’re a bear!” Then she opened the screen door, and the bear ran out.

Bears also hang out in Motander’s avocado orchard, lobbing the pits at each other, and on her terrace, twirling on the metal hand railing as if it were a jungle gym. Motander and other residents tell Bosell story after story about the bears, like the ones who jump in their pools--the chlorine helps get rid of ticks and fleas. One of the city’s regulars is Little Girl, who recently broke into Motander’s basement, probably to escape the heat and catch some sleep.

Little Girl is cinnamon-colored, with a blond face and a triangular white blaze on her chest. Bosell also has tracked Little Girl’s mother, Blaze, whom she hasn’t seen recently. “Her mom was a first-generation trash can bear,” Bosell says. “She’s a second-generation trash can bear.”

Little Girl is used to the sounds of urban life, such as traffic, and recently has stopped scuttling away when she hears Bosell’s raised voice: “She looks at you like, ‘Whaaaaat?’ ” If Bosell runs after her, Little Girl acts as if she’s fleeing back to the foothills; then she sneaks back to her original spot. And Bosell will be right there. At that point, Little Girl usually gives up and leaves the neighborhood.

Other bears can be frightened off by noise, such as yelling, jangling key chains or popping open a soda can. If that doesn’t work, and Bosell, who is unarmed, chases after them, in most cases, the surprised bears lumber off. “They all have different facial expressions,” she notes with a laugh. “They kind of look at you like, ‘Huh? Do you realize what’s going on here?’ And you get all this really, really comical stuff going on with these guys.”

Not that Bosell doesn’t take the potential dangers seriously. She watches for signs that tell her when a bear is about to charge. An angry bear will chomp its teeth, moan, snap its jaw and stamp its feet. “When the situation turns around,” she says, “they’ll let me know.” Experts advise people not to run away because this can spur the bear to give chase. Also, according to Fish and Game officials, no human can outrun a bear. But twice, Bosell has fled from a bear because there was no alternative. In both cases she made it to safety. She thinks her days playing soccer keep her speedy.

Maybe she isn’t scared of bears because she has worked with animals all her life, muses Bosell. Growing up in the Indiana countryside, she caught snakes with her brothers and reared baby deer. In a previous job, working for the city of Arcadia, she became intrigued by the issue of bears in the foothills and the way each of them has its own personality.

On most days at Canyon Park, Bosell leads hikes for children or sets up interpretive displays at the nature center. During bear season, she is on Little Girl’s trail.

On this morning Bosell drives by Little Girl’s hangouts. She points out a drainage pipe in someone’s frontyard. A neighbor had insisted that a bear was living inside the pipe, but Bosell was skeptical; the space was too tight. “So I started crawling in there and went, ‘Woooo, there’s a bear in here!’ ” Bosell backed up, and Little Girl came flying out. She isn’t around today, but she’s bound to turn up soon.

Little Girl is 3, which means that she’ll be of breeding age next June, ready to raise a new generation of trash can cubs. The possibility keeps Bosell hopping, on call for emergencies throughout the season, willing to wait 11 hours until a bear comes down from a tree. Bosell, who is engaged to be married, has a 10-year-old daughter who she sometimes takes with her on bear calls.

Recently Bosell told her mother that, sorry, she can never move back home to Indiana. The state doesn’t have any bears.