ESTESBOG

 Photo by Joe Lewendowski courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife

by Peter G. Walker

In order to put today’s tale in perspective, and to be fair to all concerned, I need to give you quite a bit of background. First of all, those of you who have never visited the little known region of eastern Colorado, you need to appreciate just how rural it is. Discounting Greeley, which is really an eastward extension of the Colorado Front Range, in an area the size of the entire state of Maine, there are only four “cities” that approach 10,000 people in size. The entire region has a phone book about the size of the one we used 30 years ago for the greater Augusta area in Maine. It’s about as rural as it gets. Mayberry RFD with cattle trucks and wheat fields.

About 45 miles northeast of my home town of Fort Morgan (population 10,000) is northeast Colorado’s other major city, Sterling (population also 10,000 if you count all the inmates in the local state prison). Except for yucky tap water, Sterling is a neat and almost always quiet town. After the 911 disaster, Congress, through the Homeland Security Act, made a lot of grant money available to even remote little towns like Sterling. In the years since 911, there have been several incredibly brutal and senseless slaughters in a couple of Colorado schools and at least one large church perpetrated by deranged students and citizens. Sterling’s government, while realistically not overly afraid of international terrorism, certainly has as much reason as any Colorado town to fear terrorism of the domestic sort. Therefore the remote little business and railroad yard community used its federal money to equip and train a SWAT team.

All of the northeastern counties in Colorado are shortgrass prairie. The only “forests” are widely spaced cottonwoods, peachleaf willows and introduced trees such as brown ash and Russian olive that grow along watercourses, few and far between. Colorado has plenty of black bears and mountain lions, but to have any chance at all of seeing  one you’d need to drive about 150 miles west from Sterling. Nevertheless, in every coffee shop and café in every village in this part of the state, you can easily find someone who, if not themselves personally, knows of someone who has seen a bear or a lion or a panther or who-knows-what in an alley or back behind Old Man Bender’s watermelon patch.

One searing hot summer day about 3 years ago, an employee at the Sterling Wal-Mart spotted a large black animal slipping stealthily into the willow and cattail thicket that grows in the bottom of a large intermittent drainage ditch leading from the back parking lot away from the store towards a housing development. She called Sterling P.D. and reported she’d just seen a bear. The Sterling Police Department activated their SWAT team.

During the melee that took place in the next few minutes with officers donning flack vests and military-style helmets and breaking out their AR-15 assault weapons, someone had the sense to call for a game warden. Veteran Wildlife Technician and Officer Mike Etl at the nearby Division of Wildlife shop at Dune Ridge took the call.

Mike arrived behind the Wal-Mart to find a group of officers huddled like musk oxen near the head of the ditch. To a Colorado Game Warden used to working alone with large animals and throngs of well-armed hunters, the SWAT officers, clad in black with abundant firepower and  body armor looked absolutely bizarre. Suppressing the repeated urge to burst out laughing, Mike gathered the very sparse facts available. He walked down into the ditch and immediately spotted a large, deep track with large claws. It was most assuredly canine and not ursine.

Recognizing the track, the game warden explained to the nervous men in black that it is not a crime to be a black bear in Sterling, Colorado or any other Colorado community for that matter. The intrepid wildlife officer then called for calm and told them all to wait while he went in to investigate.

There was a game trail of sorts through the narrow thicket. The ground became wetter as the ditch dropped progressively lower and finally, after a jungle-style stalk of about 200 yards, the warden caught up with his quarry. Sprawled in a green and slimy water hole was a very large, very hot Rottweiler.

Mike commanded the big dog  to come to him and the friendly beast came to heel just as he’d been asked.

“C’mon,” the game warden said. “I want to introduce you to some people.”

The goo-covered beast happily complied.

As Mike and his new friend got closer to the SWAT team, he called out, “Hold your fire! I’m bringing him out.” A few more steps and he could see the Sterling officers gripping their weapons cautiously and all trying to get a look at the black critter following Mike.

“Aw! It’s a big dog. Stand down!”

And that is what happened when the Sterling SWAT Team took on a bear.