A tale of courage and bravery. A tale of savage beasts and intrepid reporting.
In short, I'd like to tell you the story of:
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| Warning: This story is only about 10 percent as epic as I just made it out to be. |
I don't know if I've ever actually written it down but: I love my job. I love it for the simple reason that every day is completely different. You never know what you'll be doing on any given day. Some days you're stuck covering long meetings about city planning that feel like they're sucking out your soul and other days you're rushing to a field at 8:30 in the morning to track down a wild black bear.
Those of you who follow the Portland happenings in any capacity probably heard about the bear that wandered near Tualatin Elementary School yesterday (if you hadn't heard then, please, read on!)
Normally I cover another city and don't write much about Tualatin, but early on Wednesday morning I got a call from my photographer saying that the Tualatin reporter wouldn't be able to cover the story so I headed out to face THE BEAR.
The scary as all hell, taller than I am, 200-pound black bear, to be precise.
Whenever the press covers anything even remotely like this they tend to rope us off and make us all stand together in one area "for protection."
That spot was on the other side of where I parked my car, so I had to walk through the police barricade area in order to get there.
There were dozens of police cars parked along the road. Some were local, some county, some state. A group of about four Oregon State troopers were loading shotguns just in case the bear tried any funny business. One of them pumped his shotgun as I walked past.
He looked up at me and smiled.
"Hey," he said.
There was a local TV news helicopter making some considerable noise overhead and the crowd of photographers and reporters (aka "people like me") were lined up near the elementary school.
Between us and the bear was a soccer field and a waist-high chainlink fence.
"Totally safe," I told myself.
Police armed with tranquilizer guns (and some impressive automatic rifles) were positioned around the area very near to where we were. Some were on the roof of the school with binoculars, others were in cars ready to chase after it, should it decide to make a run for it.
Our photographer Jaime Valdez was there snapping photos and doing interviews with local radio stations (at the same time. He's that good) as I arrived.
(Before I forget, I should say that all of these photos are used by permission of photographer Jaime Valdez. Who is awesome in every way.)
Kids in the school had their noses pressed against the glass watching everything the bear and the police did. They waved at local TV cameras and craned their necks to spot the helicopter as it circled overhead.
I made a few quick calls to get the word about what was happening. One of those calls was to the school district superintendent (he's speed dialed in my phone. Yes. I know. I'm awesome) to get the official "the safety of the children is our number one priority" statement.
That's him there, with the binoculars. He's standing on the roof of the school with some police officers, who keep him informed on all things student-bear related.
At one point in the conversation he tells me "Just to let you know, the doors to the building are unlocked should you need to run."
I tell that to Jaime, who laughs (a bit nervously) and the reporters near us joke how we would react should the bear come our way.
"Jaime, are you gonna stay and get the perfect shot?" one of his photographer friends asks him. "Or are you gonna run?"
"Hey, many, I'll do what you do."
For the record: I would run. I would wet my pants, leave Jaime to fend for himself and run.
Anyway. We stood in the rain for awhile as the bear put on a bit of a show. The Fish and Wildlife biologists had to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart but couldn't sneak close enough to it in the open field to get a clear shot.
Every so often he'd hop the chain-link fence onto the school's property and then get scared back by police.
He was, maybe, 50 yards away from us.
Jaime was able to shoot this:
While I was able to capture some it on the iPhone and use it in a small video on our website.
They did eventually tranquilize the bear when it ran up a tree and my exciting day was over. I spent most of the afternoon waiting for them to bring the bear down, then talked to some neighbors, the fish and wildlife biologists who captured it, and kids from the school who had probably the most memorable school day of their entire lives.
They released the bear back into the wild sometime today out in the woods near the beach.
When I got back to the office at about 3 p.m. we had to come up with some good bear-related puns for our new lead story and I had to start writing.
If you want to read my story (and if you've made it this far into this exceedingly long post then YOU DO) just click on the big pretty newspaper page.
Thanks for reading the blog and being awesome!
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