The forest was quiet, save for the whistle of a wood thrush. The place seemed perfect. Yeah, said his colleague, Dianne Ingram, you can see the pad prints. This was not a bear. Farther on, a mile or so down the canal towpath, the bark on a dead river oak had been ripped off at just the right level.
Bears love to tear into dead trees hunting for scrumptious bugs.
This tree, alas, bore only the work of a woodpecker. Somewhere, though, among the rocky woods of hickory, maple and papaw along the Potomac River, where deer bound and groundhogs stand in fields of mowed oats, the American black bear has abruptly returned. Eighteen sightings have been reported by park rangers, campers and cyclists in recent weeks in the area, where the Antietam Creek flows from the famous Civil War battlefield and into the Potomac outside Sharpsburg. Park officials could remember only two such sightings in the last decade. They have been driven from the mountains by the drought and down to the river in search of water and more food, experts suspect.