Posted on 07/24/2024 6:29:49 AM PDT by Red Badger
A young black bear with different coloring that looked more like a Muppet than an apex predator freaked out Yellowstone tourists. But the bear, which had shaggy fur and racoon-like markings, was just a regular bear, an expert says.
(Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Sylvia Borgonovo and her husband, David, were trying to enjoy some quiet fishing on the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park when suddenly, somebody yelled “grizzly!” and tourists started to stampede.
She shouted to them that panicking and running was not the thing to do if a grizzly is approaching, but they wouldn’t listen.
Then the critter appeared: It wasn’t a grizzly, but a young black bear that Borgonovo said was the most unusual thing she’d ever seen in Yellowstone.
With light-colored — almost white — shaggy fur and facial markings described as being “like a racoon,” the confused bear looked like it could have come from the imagination of the late Jim Henson, one of the original designers of the Muppets.
“Somebody also said it looked like ‘ALF,’” Borgonovo told Cowboy State Daily, referencing the 1980s television sitcom about a furry space alien who takes up residence with a suburban family.
Tried To Calm Tourists Down
The Borgonovos are from Missoula, Montana, but they rent an apartment in West Yellowstone each year from May to October, and they spend as much time as they can outside in Yellowstone country.
They’ve seen many black bears and grizzlies over the years, and they know how to behave around bears. (Not running and screaming, for starters.)
After a day of exploring the park on July 14, they were driving back to their place in West Yellowstone when they decided to pull over next to the Madison River and get some fishing in.
Everything was quiet and peaceful at first. There was a group of about 15 tourists down the riverbank from them, and everybody seemed to be having a good time.
Then the chaos started.
“I turned to my right and put my pole down to go see what was going on. And my husband just kept fishing, of course,” she said.
The tranquility was replaced by terror.
“It was something out of a horror movie, everybody was running and screaming,” Borgonovo said.
She tried telling the tourists to calm down and just back slowly away from the bear.
It was frustrating, because running like that “is about the dumbest thing you can do,” she said.
“You’re trying to tell them, and they won’t listen to you because you don’t have a badge,” Borgonovo said. “You know how it is, people behaving badly.”
To make matters even worse, “none of them even had any bear spray with them,” she said.
That’s No Grizzly
Apparently, somebody had first spotted the bear on the opposite riverbank. When it started swimming across the river toward the tourists, people began bolting and fleeing toward their vehicles.
The bear came up the bank, perhaps 100 feet from the frightened crowd.
Borgonovo immediately recognized it as a black bear, and a young one at that, perhaps a yearling.
“People thought it was a grizzly,” she said. “Come on. It had long ears, a long nose, no dished face, no hump.”
Despite its unusual appearance, the bear looked to be in good shape and not suffering from any weird mutations.
“The bear looked healthy, young, curious … and scared,” Borgonovo said.
Natural Variations
She surmised that as a young animal, perhaps out exploring for the first time away from its mother, the bear swam across the river to get a closer look at the humans.
But when the humans went bonkers, it was probably just as frightened as they were, she said.
Once everybody was settled into their vehicles and safe from the terrifying and terrified bear, Borgonovo snapped a picture of it through a telephoto lens.
After seeing the photo, Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Specialist Dan Thompson said the bear’s appearance is just a product of nature and not the result of some strange condition.
Black bears come in a wide variety of shades, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“We see a great deal of variation in black bear pelage in Wyoming, and especially during the summer when they are shedding, they can look somewhat shaggy, mottled or unkempt as summer coats replace winter coats,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
Fox squirrel, no longer existent where I live
My neighbors, through some unusual breeding efforts, have cows with long blonde hair.
My MIL lives in a small town outside Asheville. Bears are all over the place. People set off their car alarms before they go out of the house, just to chase the bears off.
On your other note, I used to be a zookeeper, and worked with a lot of black bears. I don’t think I would have identified this critter as a black bear.
Really? They're all over my place. I'm lining my garage wall with their tails.
Used to be you could only hunt squirrels from Sept. 15 to MAR 31 with a hunting license.
Then last year they added them to the nuisance kill list, along with beavers and rabbits. Meaning you can kill them all year long without a license.
I have long contended that Disney’s portrayals of animals with human emotions and the stupid gene have caused untold deaths from wild animals of said stupid people and of the wild animals after they behave perfectly normal and have to be put down.
I had a friend in the late 1980’s early 1990’s time frame, Lord he’s probably dead now who was driving through Smokey Mountains early to work one morning and ran upon a couple with their two kids were parked in the middle of the road, clearly tourists and they were down on their knees trying to touch a pretty snake as they told him. The were trying to pet a four foot eastern Diamond back rattlesnake.
My friend gets out see’s what they are doing and yells get back slowly and leave that snake alone it’s deadly poisonous! They ignored him so he said it’s your funeral dumb asses and got back in his truck to drive off and the snake started crawling slowly across the road and they started to follow it. Said friend opps, ran over the snakes head and killed it as he drove off, they were furiously cursing him and giving him the finger. He said I hated to kill the snake but these people were dead if they had gotten bit where we were in the park they wouldn’t have made it to a hospital.
So have I.............
Lol…and GROAN!
“there’s lots of open space in the Federal Wildlife Preserve across the street”
We abut the Coeur d’Alene National Forest which is 1,100 sq miles of wilderness. There’s another couple thousand sq miles of wilderness adjoining it. So where do all the deer go? Of course they come to our towns and neighborhoods to eat our gardens. When people complain about the deer overpopulation, the liberal kooks say “the deer were here first and our construction has forced them to eat our plants.” But why can’t they be satisfied with 5,000 sq miles of wilderness home for them? Because they like the easy life of eating the smorgasbords the humans put out for them.
“Is it them again, Yogi?”
Yes, it’s the feeble-minded city slicker greenhorns in Yellowstone again. Happens every summer like clockwork.
So, the bear ate them all? I do enjoy happy endings.
I have seen maybe a dozen Black Bears up close in person but none looked like this, at first I thought it was an ape,wider than any Black bear Ive seen, Long clumpy honey color hair on top with darker colored shorter legs ( maybe blood stains), rump was real low compared to any black bear I have seen, huge hump on shoulders, huge claws , it ran so fast I was amazed at the speed, might be able to run down a motorcycle in that terrain
looks like a starving skinny undernourished Black Bear to me , note the black skin exposed on the face, I have seen many colors of hair from light reddish brown to dark dark brown almost black, could be a combination of malnutrition, drinking the poison water in Yellowstone or even could have got scalded in a pool
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