David and Laura Firment got the surprise of their lives Tuesday afternoon when they looked out the window of their home and spotted a black bear roaming around their back yard.
"It was a big bear," said David, 43. "It was huge. It was moseying around slowly with its nose to the ground."
To make matters worse, the couples' children were playing on a neighbor's trampoline and the bear was only about 20 yards away from them, he said.
"My wife yelled out the window for the kids, but they'd already seen the bear," Firment said. "The kids ran into the house screaming and the bear ran off into the woods."
The Firments live on 17th Avenue, NE, just off McDonald Parkway near Springs Road, a busy area with a lot of traffic. They spotted the bear at 3:30 p.m. and called 911. When officers arrived, they searched the woods behind the house and found nothing, Firment said.
Hickory police did see a bear in the Highland Avenue area.
Capt. Gary Lee with the Hickory Police Department said an officer saw a bear late Tuesday night in the 1700 block of Highland Avenue, several blocks east of McDonald Parkway.
Highland Avenue crosses McDonald Parkway.
Police called the N.C. Wildlife Service and were told to "leave the bear alone and it would go back into the woods," Lee said.
"Apparently, that's what happened," he said.
The Firments moved here from Michigan two years ago. David Firment said he had seen bears before, but not this big. He estimated the bear was 3 to 4 feet tall on all fours and weighed 300 pounds.
"It was not threatening at all," he said. "I was astounded by the size of the thing. Its nose was huge."
The bear in Highland caught residents' attention when it tipped over a trash can, Lee said.
But there was no damage and no close encounters.
Lee said Hickory has one or two sightings every year. One incident last year in which Lee was involved was on U.S. 321. The bear was on the highway.
"We just try to keep them off the roads and they go back into the woods," he said.
Bear sightings are rare, Lee said, but the Hickory area is bear habitat.
"People see them every once in a while," he said.
While black bears are rarely aggressive toward people, they can become bold when they are used to feeding on human-provided foods, such as garbage and birdseed. Oftentimes, they lose their fear of people, according to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.
Contrary to popular belief, wildlife employees will not trap and relocate bears who are a nuisance for homeowners and residents, because this would simply relocate the problem rather than solve it. The solution is to modify habits, such as how you feed your pet(s) or where you store your garbage, before a problem begins.
Over the past 10 years, the number of bear-complaint calls to the commission has doubled, with the vast majority of those calls from western North Carolina. Bears rummage through trash cans, tear down bird feeders, peer in doors and windows and frighten homeowners.
For more information on co-existing with black bears, read Black Bear Problems in Residential Areas at www.ncwildlife.org.
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