Residents surprised by dead bear on road

By Brendan Kirby

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    MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — Residents were surprised late Thursday by an unexpected site along the side of Cottage Hill Road – a large, dead black bear.

Kristy Reed said she saw it just before midnight between Cody and Hillcrest roads. She said she first spotted a pair of police cars as she was driving to the Sonic restaurant.

“As we passed Cody Road, we noticed two cop cars,” she said. “We thought it was a wreck. And as we drove by – I slowed down as we drove by – we noticed that it was not a wreck. It was a bear in the road — like right on the corner of the road.”

By the time Reed was returning home, she said, there were eight police vehicles. She said she has never seen anything like this in more than four decades living in the area.

“They had it laid up on the side of the road, and you could definitely see it was a bear,” she said. “I’ve never seen something like that, up close or anything. It was just really big. And I was surprised to see it out this way, west Mobile. You just don’t ever hear about stuff like that.”

Reed says it was big – maybe two and a half times her size.

“It didn’t look like it was, like, hurt. It was like it was laying there,” she said. “I couldn’t tell if it had been shot, or hit, but I know it was dead.”

Others on social media reported seeing a smaller bear, possibly a cub, on Grelot Road between Cody and Hillcrest roads.

Lt. Christopher Levy, a spokesman for the Mobile Police Department, said police responded to the call about the dead bear and then alerted the Department of Public Works. It is unclear what happened to the carcass. A city spokeswoman could not immediately provide an answer.

Bear sightings in populated areas are rare but not unheard of. A Theodore man captured images of a bear in his back yard in April. Last month, a resident of the Lake Forest subdivision in Daphne took a photo of a bear there.

Marianne Hudson, a biologist with the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division, said there are fewer than 500 bears statewide.

“There are not as many bears in Alabama as people think,” she said. “However, bears can be seen anywhere at any time.”

The reason, Hudson said, is that this is the time of year young male bears go looking for a place to live.

“This time of year, young males are on the move,” she said. “They are looking for a place to call home. So, they’re wandering, kind of like restless teenagers. They don’t have a home base. And so they’re just kind of horsing around, foraging for food as they go, and looking for a place where they won’t be chased out of an area by other male bears.”

Other members of the bear family also moving, Hudson added.

“The female mama bears are out of their den areas, and their cubs are old enough to follow them now,” she said. “And so we’ve got new cubs from this year following Mom. We’ve got young males from last year wandering and on the move.”

Hudson said people should minimize contact with bears by securing trash and removing other things that attract them to yards, like pet food.

Reed said she is still surprised.

“The only time I’ve ever heard of it (bear sightings) is, like, Saraland on the side of the interstate, west of the interstate neighborhoods,” she said.

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