Brooks Camp Field Report, July 2019: The Summer of 171

A view from the new bridge.

 Friends,

I’m back from what was my most rewarding and exhausting tour yet.  Do I always start my July field reports with something like that?  Maybe, but it’s true anyway.

While the bears, scenery, and friends old and new are always rewarding, this was my best season for the simple reason that I continue to find my proper niche in the alternate universe of Brooks Camp.  This in spite of it being impossible it is to precisely describe what that niche is.  My tours are always exhausting, since I continue to insist on playing a game arguably more proper to physically fit 20- and 30-somethings. And in spite of the rather monkish life I live in camp, consisting of not all that much more than work, eating, hygiene (well, usually…), and sleep, I’m still thoroughly thrashed at the end of the tour.  Still, this July was more exhausting than others because of the wave of record-breaking heat that enveloped much of the state for my first two weeks or so at camp, combined with the bear management team often being a skeleton crew.  The exceptionally short staffing meant that I was more often the only bear tech on duty, or even in camp. This creates many problems with covering ground, alongside having to deal with the more obstinate bears--and rolling multi-bear fights and chases--on my own.  

Before getting to the bears I should say that the new bridge really is a new era in the history of Brooks Camp. Whatever may be said about it from a fiscal, conservation, or esthetic perspective, it is a fantastic place from which to view wildlife, and to take in the grandeur of the Katmai landscape.

The Summer of 171

In describing my relationship this summer with Bear 171 (no nickname) and her two spring cubs I will assume, as in some form I always do, that we are all adults here and aware of the dangers of anthropomorphizing our fellow creatures, and also that we are aware that turning animals into automatons or unknowable black boxes in our thoughts is no improvement over anthropomorphizing.  Personally, I don’t feel like my own motivations (let alone those of other people) are anything like transparent at all times, but I sometimes find it useful to discuss them anyway. For that and other reasons, neurological and philosophical,  I am puzzled by the mindset that believes that we must perfectly dot ever i and cross every t before we dare speak of animal motives and thoughts, and I ain’t botherin’ with it here.

Were it not for 171 and cubs, I think this would have been a somewhat slow season for bears in camp.  For that reason and others I am grateful to her and her spring cubs.  I learned a lot from them and about them, gained some wonderful memories, and grew to love them.  I must confess, however, that they could be tedious to deal with, more so than any other bear family I’ve known.

171’s cubs were, like all healthy spring cubs, beings of well-nigh infinite spunk, cuteness, and charm, esp. once the salmon came in and the family started getting more calories.  I have, however, searched for a concise term with which to describe 171’s personality and, as long it is understood with a proper mix of clinical detachment and compassionate warmth, the only word I can find for 171 is “neurotic.”  That's a human term for a human condition, but if a wild bear can be neurotic, 171 is neurotic. 

The best way I can think of to describe why I call her “neurotic" may seem unfair to some bear fans.  However, since I’m certain that 171 has never lost a second of sleep wondering what I think of her, and because the comparison works, I’m going to contrast her with 435/Holly.  As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of Holly for many reasons, not the least of which being that she has in my opinion the highest overall average of positive traits of any bear on the river.  However, my main reason for using Holly for contrast is that during the previous two years she followed a similar pattern of movement to 171 in relation to camp, the beach, and the river.

In 2017, when Holly had spring cubs herself, she would (like 171) often tree them in the worst possible place for camp operations.  In fact, Holly had a knack for treeing them in places that shut down camp operations even more thoroughly than 171 managed.  (Since we need to keep visitor and most staff movements at least 50 yards from bears, picking certain spots can shut down access to key thoroughfares and facilities.)  I believe Holly’s knack for picking the worst spots was due to her choosing the spots that most strongly smelled of humans, these being the least likely places for adult males to visit and thereby the safest for her cubs.

In any case, when Holly put her cubs up a tree, she put them right up the tree and then left to go fishing in the river.  Once done she would return to her cubs, almost always bring them straight down, and leave. She would then take them along the beach and back to their favorite resting spot north of the campground.  Her leaving us to watch out for her cubs while she fished could cause serious headaches for almost everyone in camp, but it was all quite businesslike and decisive.

171, in contrast, had a very hard time making up her mind about anything. (I can relate.)  When she treed her cubs in camp it was often in a state of panic or semi-panic.  Sometimes she treed herself as well.  (If you don’t think adult brown bears can climb trees well, see 171 here .  I’ve seen her go up a tree considerably faster than what is shown in that video.)  After a while she’d come down.  Maybe she’d leave camp for a while. Maybe she’d try to get the cubs to come down but give up and leave for a while.  Maybe she’d just park at the base of the tree.  Maybe she’d do all of the above…

Eventually we were able to convince 171 not to tree her cubs in camp.  We are always careful when hazing sows with spring cubs, both out of concern for our own safety and that of the little cubs.  Nonetheless we finally found the right combination of caution and determination, although exactly what that combination was is hard to say, given how much such things rely on intangibles like voice and body language.  While none of what we tried was more than annoying to her,  some of it was harrowing for us.   Fortunately she ceased treeing the very day Michael Saxton and I had a talk centered around the theme of “No way we’re doing that again.” 

As far as I can discern, the root of 171’s neurosis boils down to her extreme fear of other bears.  It would make a long email far too long to discuss all the reasons why I’ve come to this conclusion, but I’ll give an example with a behavior I’ve never seen in another bear.  In some ways I hesitate to mention it since I don’t think it’s diagnostic, but in context I think it’s telling and in any case it is interesting in itself:  171 would beg for salmon scraps from her cubs.  Every other sow I’ve watched feeding on a salmon with her cubs either lets them have the scraps they steal, or simply takes the scraps from them, sometimes accompanied with a solid whap.  (Crude, but bears have never been known for their social graces.)  171 would beg, in precisely the way that subordinate bears beg from dominant bears.  It may just seem like an unusual kind of politeness on 171's part, but that's not how it looked from up close.  Everything I observed told me that consideration for her cubs’ hunger had nothing to do with it.  If that were the case she wouldn’t have begged from her hungry cubs in the first place.  She was just afraid to take it from them.  I don’t mean to be harsh.  She clearly loved her cubs and wanted to protect them and feed them, but I could not escape the strong impression that she was more intimidated by her cubs than they were by her.

Perhaps then it is no accident that no one on the bear team had ever seen spring cubs become so out of control so quickly, once the heat wave ended and they were all eating more.  They became utterly unafraid of people.  On one occasion they ran by me with less than a foot between them and my ankle.  This sounds cute until you realize that mom was not far behind and I was between her and her cubs. Circumstances let me off the hook with that one, but during one of the hazing experiments we vowed never to repeat, Michael ended in a standoff on the beach with 171, her cubs milling about his feet and her in a none-too-pleased mood only a few yards away.  At other times the cubs ran around the lodge porch with guests still on it and managed to rip up a purse, and they became experts in removing the plugs from the floats of floatplanes as can be seen here (more on that below).

Some of this is cute enough in the moment, and it was mostly with affection that they were given the nickname The Tiny Terrors.  Nonetheless the long-term implications were bad.  What it would be like when they were yearlings?  When they were subadults?  Even the immediate prospects were not promising, given how little control 171 had over them.  It was, then, with sadness but not surprise that I learned that one of the cubs had gone missing.  After a couple of days, judging from the obvious stress levels of 171 and the remaining cub as well as the lack of any sightings of a missing spring cub (which given this family’s travel habits almost certainly would have happened), there was no doubt that the cub was dead, very likely killed by another bear.  For the first two or three days afterward mom and the remaining cub were a very changed family. The little one was very subdued and stayed close to mom, and mom had a much shorter temper.  She even charged me hard under circumstances in which a few days prior she would have completely ignored me.  Fortunately I had a utility tractor between the two of us at the time.  After 3-4 days, mom and the remaining cub were back to normal, with the cub staying closer but back to mischief, as little cubs should be.

There's so much more I’d like to add, but we’ve come to what made this the most tedious relationship with a bear family I’ve ever dealt with, but also one of the most memorable.  (I think of it more fondly now that I’m better rested.)  The cubs became experts in, and over-the-top enthusiasts for, the art of stealing float plugs from floatplanes. Yeah, it’s charming, at least until it’s late in the day and you’ve already put in over twelve miles of walking and you are working your way down a beach with twenty float planes lined up ahead of you. You already know that the cubs are going to run up every single float—all forty of them—and do their best to steal every single plug on each (up to something like five per float).  From all available evidence it looks like 171 considers it your job to make her cubs keep up with her, and of course she couldn’t care less about the float plugs.

You’re not exactly interested in dying for the cause of protecting $5 float plugs, but you have a responsibility to make some effort, and in any case it’s not good to allow this behavior to go unchecked, for the cubs’ sake if nothing else.  So, off you go… Plane number one….  Keep an eye on mom’s position and facial expressions, allow yourself a moment’s entertainment as a tiny cub flies through the air from the float to the beach and the other cub half-misses jumping on the other float.  Toss sand at them to get them to let go of a float plug. Where’s mom now?  Why is she doubling back, okay, she’s only checking you out.  Plane number two, only eighteen more after this one….  Try to remember to find that plug the cub just managed to completely remove and dropped on the beach…

I’m hoping the remaining cub makes it.  Leslie Skora told me that the only cub of 171’s that she can remember having made it to adulthood was one that was abandoned early as a yearling.  The use of camp and the beach by camp was a new experiment for 171 however.  Maybe it will work better than what she tried before.  I completely get it that there is a Malthusian/Darwinian necessity in most cubs not making it to reproductive age. Nonetheless I don’t think there’s any contradiction in still hoping for the best for the little rascal, and I do.

Other Things

I can’t bring myself to cut my account of 171’s family more than I have, but I can’t bring myself to make this email much longer than it is.  It’s painful, though, given how many other things took place:  A pair of wolves almost certainly raising cubs near the river (a first in my experience)…  A very sick yearling cub abandoned for dead in a marsh, who later recovered and on the day I left camp was returning to normal…  A large and strangely scary-looking bear appearing silently about ten feet to my right in the woods…  Having one of our two wolves cross the road nonchalantly about ten yards in front of me, our eyes meeting for a couple of seconds…  Leslie Skora and I having to deal with two unusually large, cheeky, and aggressive subadults as they were trying to dig up the bunkhouse plumbing…  The chaos of having seven subadults and a sow and her single, huge yearling stirring up chaos across camp… Hammering with my “bear sticks” on the side of the law enforcement skiff to get 132’s monster cub to quit trying to destroy the engine wiring, mom none too pleased with me…  The salmon ceasing to come up the river during the heat wave, instead hanging out in the river until the system broke and rains came, bringing them up the river in a massive surge...

Until September,

Carl