Of Bears, Strawberries and Isuzus

Last weekend, a bear appeared in Camarillo.

This bear, by all accounts, weighed somewhere between 300 and 450 pounds, and walked with a slightly lopsided gait. It crossed a strawberry field on its way to town, sniffed around a McDonald’s and stopped traffic on the freeway. Then, with a little help from some friends, the bear returned to its home in the mountains.

Not a big deal, I guess. Just a bear in Camarillo. No one got hurt and the story barely made the newspapers.

Still, you might think about this bear. Once, I am told, bears appeared with some regularity around the fringes of Los Angeles. In those days, the bears would come out of the mountains in the spring and amble down to the valleys, looking for grub.

But no more. Now the valleys are filled with Isuzu dealers. Now the valleys are packed with tracts named after varieties of wine. In any case, the bears seldom show up anymore.

Except for this bear, who picked Memorial Day weekend. While everyone else had gone to the desert, or to the sea, or were hiding behind the walls of their Chardonnay Hills Estates, the bear came to town.

First he rooted around some strawberry fields near the city limits and, being a bear, doubtlessly tossed back a few of the finest and sweetest the fields had to offer. What bear could resist?

You may be thinking, at this point, that the strawberries constituted the very thing that drew the bear from his mountain hideaway.

I would have thought that, too. Except the bear did not stay in the strawberry fields forever. In fact, he moved on rather quickly, going deeper into the heart of civilization, as if he had another destination in mind.

We know about his movements because he was spotted around this time by a couple of Camarilleans out for a morning jog. It was the break of day, and the joggers were running along Las Posas Road. We don’t know how close the bear came to the joggers or whether they were frightened, but we do know what happened next. They called the police.

I’m sure I would have done the same. Wouldn’t you? After all, the bear no longer belongs in the valley. The Camarilleans belong there. Isuzus belong there. Not the bear.

So they called. “There’s a bear in Camarillo,” they said.

This produced a rapid response from the following agencies: the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Ventura County Department of Animal Regulation.

It was a bear dragnet. And a good thing, too, because the bear now was advancing on the core of the city. When spotted by the dragnet, he was delicately sniffing around the McDonald’s on Las Posas Road. Quietly, the dragnet surrounded the bear and a sharpshooter lowered his weapon.

You might be bracing yourself here for a bloody confrontation. Fear not. One of the great advances of modern civilization happens to be the tranquilizer dart, which is what the sharpshooter was aiming. He fired, and the dart struck its mark. But something went wrong. Instead of settling into a narcotized slumber, the bear took off.

If this were a movie, the next part would be called the chase scene. First the bear lumbered along U.S. 101 with the full dragnet in hot pursuit. All lanes of the freeway were closed by the CHP. Alas, to no avail. The bear hopped a chain-link fence and headed back toward downtown.

Finally the bear found a place that looked comfortable. It was the El Pollo Loco. The bear settled down and the sharpshooter took aim again. Pop, pop. Two more darts, and the bear paid a visit to the sandman.

All this happened before the stores opened, before the freeways filled. Almost no one, except for the joggers and the members of the dragnet, ever saw the bear.

Where had he come from? No one knew. Maybe the Santa Susana Mountains. Maybe the Santa Monicas. Either way, the bear had crossed roads, subdivisions, even a state highway. In recent memory, no one could recall another bear reaching civilized Camarillo.

And no one knew why he came. Maybe he was hungry, though that’s unlikely given this year’s lush spring. Maybe he was simply tired of being pushed into the hills by Isuzus and houses.

Anyway, the bear was hauled off to the mountains. If he thought he could reclaim Camarillo, he had made a mistake. They gently lifted him into the truck that the pound uses for stray dogs, and off he went. By everyone’s account, it was a tight fit.