Alaska brown bear Credit: FWS/Donna Dewhurst
Brown bears have been snarfing down moose calves in South Anchorage. Moose cows have been dropping twins all over town — we just spied two spindly legged babies chasing after mom in the municipal park a few hundred yards from our back gate.
“You’ve got the bears in town chasing moose calves,” state biologist Rick Sinnott told the Anchorage Daily News in a story posted this week. “You’ve got the moose cows trying to protect their calves. … It’s almost the perfect storm.”
It’s also regular life for Anchorage in June, when bears roam and moose get snarky about their space.
One evening a few years ago, just about this exact date, the late TV news reported that bear tracks had been sighted in a city park on Anchorage’s urban east side. State biologists were skeptical but matter-of-fact.
It could be a young male bear out wandering during its first year away from Mom, they said. A teenage bear, perhaps, seeking its place in the world.
I was curious.