Bear’s a beast of a house guest

PORTLAND – At home in bed in the middle of the night, Michelle Schireman heard noises coming from her west Portland kitchen – a shuffling sound, then a rumbling and finally a full-blown temper tantrum.

“It sounded like a gremlin,” she says, “like there was something possessed in my kitchen.”

Her two dogs, Rogue and Fergus, heard it too, and they shot her looks that seemed to say: “You better go take care of that.”

Schireman rose, padded to the kitchen and slipped past the puppy gate at the door. She heated water, mixed it with powdered milk formula, topped it with fruity Gerber baby food and delivered the mixture to the demanding 4-month-old American black bear cub temporarily residing in her kitchen.

And yes, should you already wonder, the bear rearranged every refrigerator magnet he could reach.

Schireman, see, is a longtime Oregon Zoo keeper, and her bear-cub story starts in the way such tales too often do, with public officials annually repeating the leave-wild-animals-alone mantra. Inevitably, someone doesn’t.

In this case, a Medford youngster took a bear cub from the wild and brought it home, which is illegal. The family soon realized they had no clue how to care for the approximately 4-pound animal, which could eventually grow to 6 feet tall and 600 pounds. They took it to Wildlife Images, a rehabilitation and education center near Merlin, which contacted Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on April 23.

The same day, Colin Gillin, the state wildlife veterinarian, dialed Schireman. He frequently calls her when wildlife workers come across orphaned cougar cubs, which cannot survive in the wild without their mothers. She routinely fosters them and has found zoo homes for 75 orphaned cougars.

Bears, however, are far harder to place in accredited zoos.

She agreed to care for the cub until the Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ taxon advisory group for black bears could find a zoo to take it.

When Schireman arrived home with the bear in an animal crate, her Belgian sheepdog and Shetland sheepdog “were immediately repulsed by the smell,” she said. The dogs backed off.

The kitchen, with a bleachable floor, seemed the place to keep the newcomer. Confined by the puppy gate, the cub couldn’t escape.

The NEW Zoo in suburban Green Bay, Wis., has an adult black bear, Winnie, and officials aimed to find her a companion. They agreed to take the cub.

About a week and a half after taking him in, Schireman shipped her houseguest off. The zoo named him Aldo.

And Schireman? Well, she may still be cleaning that kitchen.