I couldn’t believe that anybody should be so crass as shooting a brown bear and her two cubs. They were doing no harm.
I had a visitation from mama bear and two cubs for two weeks or so in July at 8.5 Mile Haines Highway. When she was plucking grass from the mailbox at the end of my driveway, all sorts of cars stopped to take photographs, and I think residents and visitors alike enjoyed her. She and her cubs and her poop messed up my driveway, she dumped rocks from the rockery garden, took cherries off my tree – it needed pruning anyway – and ate up my peas, but it was a privilege to see the brown bears. When I hollered and banged pots, big mama bear and her cubs instantly took off into the trees. She was going around doing her business like any bear should, and the brown bears were an awe-inspiring sight. It reminded me of that wildness that comes knocking at your door. I couldn’t believe she and her cubs were shot and then buried. I was stunned to tears. What possessed that spiteful 23-year-old male at 7.5 Mile to kill them? They were doing no harm to anyone.
Margaret Piggott