A bear ripped my car apart then went back into the woods

Two summers ago, I made the mistake of leaving a bag of cat food in my car overnight. Neither did I bother to lock the car. Living out in the country — indeed, out in the woods of Botetourt County — I figured I didn’t need to worry about such things.

Overnight, a bear opened the car door and dragged the bag of Rachael Ray brand cat food halfway up the driveway, where it ripped the bag open enough to sample the morsels inside and decide our indoor cats are living pretty well. 

After that, I started locking my car — and making sure the cat food was in the house. 

Last summer, the bear came back and, finding the car locked, ripped off the door handles on the driver’s side of the vehicle.

Bears have long memories, so long that they have been studied by the National Institutes of Health. It’s said that bears can remember a good food source for years. My local bear apparently remembered the bag of cat food in my car the way we humans remember that out-of-the-way barbecue joint on the way to the beach we stopped at that one time. (That would be Wilson’s BBQ & Seafood in South Hill.)

Over Memorial Day weekend, I once again made the mistake of leaving my car unlocked. The next morning, I found all four car doors open and the inside ransacked in the same way that some of us ransack a grocery store if there’s a report of a single snowflake. Except this time my car had no cat food — or any food — in it, so the bear left disappointed.

It just didn’t leave for long.

Most diners, finding their favorite menu item at the local restaurant no longer available, might post a bad review on Yelp. Bears haven’t yet acquired such social media skills. Bears are creatures from the Pleistocene Epoch who are still trying to adjust to the arrival of these upstart bipeds in North America who have encroached on their territory.

The next night, the bear came back. It tried all four doors. Finding them locked, it ripped off all four door handles. It got on the roof and, whether by trying to bash it in or just by the sheer force of its weight (black bears can top out at 300-500 pounds), left a big dent. Oh, and the bear also ripped off the back bumper — along with whatever pieces of the car were attached to it. 

All this because two years ago I left a bag of cat food in the car.

Did I mention that bears have good memories? Obviously better than mine. I sometimes forget to set out the trash, but the bear never forgets. When our neighbor down the road sets out their trash the night before, the bear always arrives to conduct a personal inspection and leaves the contents strewn up and down the roads.

Ripping apart trash bags is one thing, though. Ripping apart a car as if it were nothing more than a tin can is quite another. Just how dangerous are bears, anyway?

That depends. Most of the time, bears are shy creatures who will skedaddle if they encounter a human. Just don’t try to punch one in the nose — or get between a mother and her cubs — and you’ll probably be all right. However, keep this in mind: Bears are big (the largest on record in Virginia was a 740-pounder in the Great Dismal Swamp in Suffolk in 2000). Bears are strong (said to be five times stronger than a human, with a bite of 800 pounds per square inch, which is quite enough to turn your arm into a bloody stump). Bears are also blessed by nature with four important traits: a long memory, a keen sense of smell, an insatiable curiosity and also an insatiable appetite. This is what causes trouble.

How long is a bear’s memory? Basically, forever, says Carl Tugend, the state’s bear biologist with the Department of Wildlife Resources. If they find a good food source — oh, let’s just say a bag of Rachael Ray Nutrish Indoor Complete Chicken with Lentils and Salmon, just to give a wild hypothetical — “they remember for the rest of their lives,” Tugend says.

Great, just great.

“They have an unbelievable sense of smell,” Tugend says. “Second to none. It could have been as simple as cat food and the bag was open and there were just some little crumbs.” To a bear, those crumbs smell like a feast. “It doesn’t know how much is there, just smells it,” Tugend says. Unfortunately, lots of things smell like a feast to a bear. Hot tub covers? The seats on a four-wheeler? “The foam in those covers has folic acid,” Tugend says. That smells like food to a bear, specifically a delicious ant mound. Many people have discovered their hot tub covers slashed open or their four-wheeler sets devoured, Tugend says. Bears have a strong sense of hearing, too. An underground well pump? That might sound like a beehive, Tugend says. And where there are bees, there must be honey, so … 

Bears are also lifelong learners, Tugend says. A bear that found food in one car might reason that other cars might have food, too. “They have a strong remembrance, mixed with a strong drive of curiosity, and they’re driven by their stomach,” Tugend says. “A bear is a strong animal that likes to figure things out. There are not too many obstacles for an adult bear. I know they look lumbering and lazy but I’ve seen videos of them prying car doors off so I’m not surprised it took your bumper off.”

Bears do not start off in life thinking, “You know what, I’d like to grow up and disassemble a few cars.” We inadvertently teach them all these bad behaviors. For one thing, we choose to live in their territory. We also leave food out where they can find it — trash day is an all-you-can-eat buffet for a bear. “A bear doesn’t go zero to a hundred,” Tugend says. “Bears don’t want to be in people’s space. The only reason is they are being fed, whether it’s a person with a bird feeder on a porch, or feeding outdoor cats, or a trash can unsecured.” To a bear, all these are the same: an invitation to drop by for a spell and chow down.

Many people like nature, but they like it best at a distance — not outside rooting through the trash. If this happens often enough, you’re supposed to pick up your trusty shooting iron — scratch that, your phone — and call the Virginia Wildlife Conflict Helpline. For the fiscal year ending last October, the helpline handled 18,631 calls about troublesome wildlife. (No word on how many times wildlife calls their own helpline to complain about troublesome humans.) The statewide map of these calls reveals a curious but predictable pattern: The calls are highest where there’s the least wildlife. Rural areas record the fewest calls. Either we have learned to live in harmony with nature, or we just don’t fool with government bureaucracy. The most calls come from Northern Virginia and the Richmond suburbs, which wildlife thinks of as either a) its historic terrain or b) trash can heaven. 

Over the past decade, the animals that prompted the most calls were bears (although deer took the lead in 2024). The number of deer complaints has been rising consistently over the years; bear complaints go up and down in response to the supply of mast — aka nuts and seeds. Bears aren’t vegetarians, but about 70% to 80% of their diet is plant-based. When there’s a good year for mast, bears stay out in the woods. When there’s not, they head into town and hit the trash cans like frat boys hitting the bars on spring break. Last year, 2,431 of those 18,631 helpline calls were about rowdy bears.

While most of the helpline calls are from Northern Virginia and the Richmond suburbs, those generally are deer. The bear complaints mostly come along the Blue Ridge. The past two years, the most bear-complaining locality was Roanoke County, which displaced bear-disapproving Albemarle County.

While my complaint about a car-attacking bear was unusual, it wasn’t the worst Tugend had heard. Every year, there are some bears that violate Virginia code section 18.2-91 — breaking and entering. “We have a handful of home entries,” Tugend says. “In a bad year, it’s still less than 10,” although I doubt that comes as much consolation to the person whose home was vandalized. 

If a bear is a big enough nuisance, the Department of Wildlife Resources will relocate it. Sometimes, more drastic measures are called for. “We probably have to humanely put down 5 to 8 bears a year,” Tugend says. Often, the real culprit there isn’t the bear, but the human. “We do have people who handfeed bears,” Tugend says. Once a bear learns one human will offer food, the bear concludes that all humans should and, well, nothing good ever comes of that — especially for the bear.

However, non-biologists put down a lot more bears every year, outside of hunting season. If a bear causes enough damage, the Department of Wildlife Resources can issue a “kill permit” to give someone permission to deal with a meddlesome bear with extreme prejudice. Last year, the state issued 236 such kill permits; that was a five-year low. The high point was 438 permits in 2020. These permits are almost entirely in the western part of the state. Last year, my county — Botetourt — led the way with 13 kill permits. Botetourt led the state the year before, too, with 24 kill permits. I’m not looking to have “my” bear dispatched, although I would like to have a stern conversation with him. You might think Botetourt leads the way because it’s a county where suburban development is pushing into bear country. However, the vast majority of the kill permits issued are issued for agricultural reasons — usually about 90% or more of these permits cite bears damaging farm crops, primarily corn. Bears love corn on the cob, and can you blame them? Only 16 of the 236 kill permits issued last year were for bears in residential areas.

As for the bear that practiced its auto tech skills on my car, it’s still out there in the woods somewhere, nursing a warm memory of that Rachael Ray cat food and a deep grudge at why there hasn’t been any more later. And my car? The insurance company declared it a total loss.

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