Once upon a time there was a black bear in the Michigan woods. He roamed, hibernated, searched for food and did whatever else a bear does in the woods.
But the world of humans encroached on this bucolic setting. The bear got his head stuck in a plastic lid. And it would not come off.
Thus began a two-year odyssey. The bear kept roaming with his new collar. He grew, only making the collar tighter, and while human beings wanted to help, he remained elusive.
But fear not, dear reader, this story has a happy ending.
The bear, then just a cub, was first spotted on trail cameras in 2023. His head was stuck in a 5-inch diameter hole in a blue plastic lid, the kind that might be found on a 50-gallon drum.
Such drums are sometimes used by hunters: the containers are filled with food, luring the bears to where hunters await. But under Michigan law, baiting containers must have holes that are either less than one inch or greater than 22 inches in diameter.
“Container openings of a certain size can result in bears and other wildlife getting their heads or other body parts stuck in them, leading to injury or death,” said Cody Norton of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, who carries the title of “bear, furbearer and small game specialist.”
“It’s important to remember that the opening diameter is more important than the size of the container,” he said.
Plastic containers have been an ongoing problem for bears, with cases popping up in Florida, Wisconsin and Tennessee recently. All of these incidents involved bears with their heads stuck in cheese ball jars (and all of them were freed).
And it’s not just bears who become entangled in human detritus. An elk in Colorado carried a tire around his neck for two years (he, too, was eventually freed, though at the cost of his antlers).
Over the past two years, the bear in Michigan was periodically seen on trail camera photos only to vanish again before help could arrive.
Finally in May there was a sighting in Montmorency County in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. Officials trapped the bear earlier this month.
The bear — 2 years old, 110 pounds and still growing — was sedated, and rescuers cut off the lid.
Upon awakening, he was then released back into the wild, where his ramblings will now thankfully be less encumbered.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
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