A Bear in Rural Northfield

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine who lives west of Northfield in Bridgewater Township told me that while driving home from the Twin Cities a few nights earlier, she had seen and almost hit a black bear trying to dart onto Old Dutch Road near I-35.

Now the Northfield News has a story with video about a bear that has repeatedly visited the wooded property of a Bridgewater Township resident.


WCCO did a story about a month ago about the increasing number of bear sightings in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities. Northfield, of course, is a good hour or more south of that area. Biologists hypothesize that the southward migration might be related to our very early spring this year -- bears may have awoken from hibernation early but their favored foods may not have developed similarly early, causing the animals to go in search of food.

Fascinating. I fear more cases of bears getting too close to humans and being shot, as happened recently when a black bear was shot by police after it strayed onto a White Bear Lake golf course.