The Newtown Bee reported a sad and somewhat disconcerting story earlier this summer about a golden retriever, the remains of which were found after it had been missing for a couple days. Nobody was quite sure what might have happened, coyotes live up in this heavily wooded area, and a bear or bears have been seen on that side of town. As virtually every news report on bears around here points out, black bears are more interested in your garbage than you or your pets, unless you’re getting between the beast and its cubs.

Which is probably (see Eugene Driscoll’s News-Times piece with video) what happened in New Milford this morning, where a man shot a mature female black bear dead in his yard. See a slide show of the treed cubs’ capture here.

Incidentally, this (referring to an earlier thread) is an example of how professional news organizations are migrating their breaking news coverage online.

Given the range of of black bears, and the short distance on foot from Newtown to New Milford, its possible this is the same bear that has been spied in Newtown.

In recent years, partially due I suspect to the continuing destruction of natural habitat, and perhaps not just that, there seems to have been an increase in sightings and perhaps populations, of large wildlife. Deer are almost a pestilence in some towns, and moose have been seen in the northwest corner. Predator/scavenger species such as coyote, fox, and bear are no longer a novel occurrence. Wolves have even been rumored seen wandering down this way. I don’t see rabbit like I remember growing up.

As I’m writing this, I can hear the red-tailed hawks overhead as they soar on the drafts rising off the ridge nearby, hunting. At night, the owls’ calls echo up and down the hollow. At dusk and dawn, I have to keep a sharp eye while driving to avoid the deer and the fox that are out to feed.

It’s great living in a gigantic forest, and having the wildlife around, even if things are a bit more complicated because of it.

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