COLUMN: Straight From the Hog’s Eye — Bears and other things overheard on scanner

The police, fire and EMS scanner is running constantly in our office at the News & Post. Generally, we know what to listen for, and when we hear news breaking, we get out and cover it.

Sometimes, you hear some things you don’t expect to hear. Once, I remember a dispatcher, in the most deadpan delivery, explain to police officers that a subject was standing beside the road and mooning passing motorists.

Another time, I heard two officers talking frantically with each other via radio as they were chasing someone.

One officer yelled, “He ran that way!” The other officer responded quickly, “Which way’s THAT way?”

Thursday night, I heard something on the scanner that definitely was a first for me. Lake City police were setting up a perimeter while trying to find a bear in the woods between Church Street and Graham Road.

I knew I had to get that story.

While a bear search in Lake City was a first for me, the police department had handled a similar situation years ago, Police Chief Billy Brown told me. In that case, the bear eventually just left town, which is apparently what our most recent ursine visitor did, as well.

I quickly found out it wasn’t just one bear, but a mother bear in search of her cub. From what I heard, she was not likely to be in a good mood.

I didn’t get to see the bear, and I’m not entirely certain I would have wanted to. Deep down, as a journalist, I think it would have been a thrilling, but frightening thing. Everyone knows you don’t want to get between a mother bear and her cub.

So it remains that the only place I’ve really seen bears is the zoo. I saw one in the mountains once, in a small touristy town. That bear, however, was being held captive in a cage that seemed far too small for it.

Looking back, I feel bad for the animal and regret putting even 25 cents into the machine that dispensed the food you could feed the bear; it was like something you’d toss to fish in a pond. I was younger and things like that bothered me less back then, I suppose. I just thought it was fun to see a bear so close up and so docile.

The last time I was in the area, however, I noticed the bear display was gone. I imagine they probably got a cruelty complaint or two, which might have had something to do with that animal’s absence.