Squirrels Are Unintentionally Luring Bears to Railroad Tracks

Train cars leak seeds, rodents collect them, and bears show up for easy meals.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bear-squirrels-seeds-trains-banff-canada

And spilled grain ferments after a derailment, also attracting bears...

CCC1007 said:

And spilled grain ferments after a derailment, also attracting bears...

Click to expand...

About 25 years ago, photojournalist John Yeager, who was working for the local ABC affiliate in Spokane at the time, produced a show called "The Empire Builder: Discovering the Great Northwest" which as you might gather from the title was a show about the EB as it made its journey from Chicago to Seattle, showing the sights along the way and talking with some of the Amtrak employees who helped make the journey possible. At one point, when the EB was making its way through Glacier Park, the subject of bears came up. Yeager was in the engine, talking with the engineer, and the engineer told him why they hadn't seen any bears. There had been a BN grain train derailment in that area, and the grain had spilled and fermented. According to the engineer, the bears had eaten the fermented grain, gotten intoxicated, and were all at the detox center. :lol: :lol: :lol: Sounds good to me!!!

I guess the smartness of the average bear is only, well, average. Obviously Jellystone Park Bears take the train, in a Roomette, for the included meals.

As long as the bears aren't eating up hikers, they can have all the squirrels they want, I've got some from my back porch to donate...