[ back ]
WEST MILFORD - Hunter rescues cub in distress
(by Donna Rolando - Managing Editor - November 03, 2008)
WEST MILFORD - While meeting up with a hunter can be bad news for wildlife, there’s a black bear today that probably owes its life one such encounter.
Struck by a vehicle and left in bad shape on LaRue Road Monday, Oct. 20, this cub was lucky to meet up with Raymond Van Tassell, a Borough of Franklin resident, who was on his way to work in this township.
Although Van Tassell is a hunter, he said, “I hate to see anything struggle,” and so while others gathered around the bear as it lay in the road just before 7 a.m., he began the role of a Good Samaritan after disbanding the crowd for its safety.
Recalling the bear’s plight, Van Tassell said, “It was lying in the road with its feet up in the air but moving.”
He waited for about one hour for the mother bear to return, but she didn’t, and then the cub seemed to be taking a dangerous turn.
“The bear was getting weaker and weaker. It wasn’t moving,” he said.
Van Tassell knew of a Wanaque sanctuary where folks come to the aid of injured wildlife, so he picked up the 41-pound cub and put it in the back of his SUV for about a 20-minute ride to that refuge.
During that time, Van Tassell admitted he was a bit nervous that the bear might perk up and pose a threat, but he was willing to make the effort.
Dee Garbowski, president of Wildlife Freedom Inc., said it was quite a sight when Van Tassell climbed her driveway in his SUV.
“Somebody just drove up with a bear in the back of his vehicle,” Garbowski recalled.
Garbowski took note of a 10- to 12-inch long gash that ran from the bear’s stomach to its groin as well as road rash on its shoulder and face “like it got dragged or slid on the pavement.”
To clean the wounds, Garbowski and her daughter, Lysa DeLaurentis, an animal control officer, felt it best to tranquilize it.
“He definitely would have swatted me. He had a really bad gash,” DeLaurentis said.
After roughly 30 hours at the Wanaque refuge, the bear headed for more extensive care at a veterinarian’s office in South Jersey.
With several hundred stitches required to seal his wounds, the cub earned the name Stitches and is now rebounding nicely at Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County, with an anticipated release to the wild this coming spring, DeLaurentis said.
This past spring, another rescued bear cub returned to the wild from Woodlands. That cub, named Broke Leg Bear, was rescued from the area of Macopin Road by Bloomingdale Police, put in the back of a squad car, and also transported to Garbowski’s for care.
In June, Woodlands reported that it had successfully released eight bear cubs in 2008, among the 500 to 600 wild animals it handles annually.
[ back ]
