Bear sighted in Manassas

According to the News & Messenger unofficial count, bear sightings in the area stand at about a dozen.

Black bears have been reported this summer mainly in the Haymarket-Gainesville areas, but one reader reported a sighting in Fairfax County.

Yvonne Bashaw, the director of Winwood Childrens' Center in Gainesville, said a parent of a child who attends her day care center saw a bear feeding at a trash container in the center's parking lot Sunday evening.

"They took a picture with their phone and e-mailed it to me, so we kept the kids in Monday morning so we could make sure he wasn't in the area," Bashaw said.

Bashaw called the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to find out what to do.

They told her there wasn't much to do, she said.

"They said black bears typically stay away from people," Bashaw said of the advice she got from a game and inland fisheries official.

"He said unless he [the bear] finds a dominant food source like a Dumpster, a bird feeder, squirrel feeder or something like that, he will not stay," Bashaw said.

"The kids wouldn't be considered a food source. I asked about that," Bashaw said.

John and Heather DiNicolantonio reported two bear sightings on Tuesday. One was on Market Ridge Road in the Villages of Piedmont in the Haymarket area and later a bear was seen drinking from a bird bath in "someone's back yard" on Jordan Crest Court.

Fawn Kemp also reported bear sightings on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Villages of Piedmont.

Cathy Hindman reported that a small black bear got into her trash can at her home on Conway Drive near the intersection of Va. 234 and Minnieville Road earlier this month.

Dick Powell sent in some pictures of a bear eating seed from his bird feeder in Heritage Hunt on June 23.

An e-mailer reported that a bear was seen at the Waverley Mill condominium complex near Linton Hall Road and Glenkirk Drive on Sunday.

The bear wandered around for a while and was later seen climbing over a fence into a wooded area behind Eric Court.

That sighting might have been the day care bear.

A couple of bear sightings were also reported in Bristow.

Lynn Rogers, senior bear biologist and chairman of the board of the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minn., said it's hard to tell for sure, but people might be spotting a single bear.

"Unless they know markings on the bear, and they can say it's a different one, and it's in an area where there haven't been bears, I would take the parsimonious approach and say it's probably just one bear," said Rogers .

Bears that wander the most are generally young males looking for a place to settle and they're looking for three things, Rogers said.

"They're looking for food, a place where they don't get chased by other bears too much, and females," he said of the nomads that can wander as far as 200 miles looking for a home.

Our neighborhoods very often offer two of the three things bears want most.

"They get into a residential area, there's no females, but there is food and people don't chase them too much and people don't bite. They're not as bad as bears. They feel pretty safe there after a little bit," Rogers said of the wandering bears.

Rogers said whether spotting a bear is a problem depends on who's doing the spotting.

"Whether it's a problem or not purely depends on the person's attitude," Rogers said.

If you don't want a bear around, it's pretty easy to get rid of them, Rogers said.

Pepper spray works if you have the gumption to get close enough to the bear to use it.

No pepper spray handy? Grab a big black garbage bag and rustle in the air as you run toward the bear. The rustling makes a lot of noise, and waving a plastic bag in the air is not something bears associate with normal human behavior. Plus it's scary, Rogers said.

"They're very easy to chase away because they're basically timid animals," said Rogers, who has been studying bears for more than 42 years. "Anything you can do that looks unusual gives extra terror to the bears."

Tossing tennis balls at bears will generally scare them off as will banging pots and pans, or squirting it with a "super soaker," Rogers said

Rogers doesn't use props if he needs to get rid of a bear. He simply raises his voice.

"I've never seen one that I could not chase away by yelling and running at it," Rogers said.