A Lady Lake hair salon that has been having a problem with a couple of bears hanging around, received a little help Thursday from a bear specialist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The bears showed up last month at VIP Hair Salon on Lady Lake Boulevard. And the pair have been spotted there several times since.
“They have been up in the trees hissing and growling at people,” said Rudy Gonzeles, who owns the shop with his wife, Juli Roberts.
He said he’s worried about the safety of the shop’s customers and employees.
Mike Connolly, a bear specialist with FWC, said leftover food in nearby dumpsters and acorns from trees near the shop have likely been attracting the bears.
Connolly proposed a relatively simple solution.
He gave Gonzales a scarecrow.
Not the traditional type of scarecrow that famously needed a brain in “The Wizard of Oz,” but rather a scarecrow that shoots a squirt of water at a bear who strays into an area he doesn’t belong.
“Bears don’t like to be touched. They don’t like anything like water coming at them,” Connolly said.
He predicted that the squirts of water would probably do the trick.
“We want to make the bear uncomfortable,” Connolly said.
He said the bears were probably a mother and her cub.
When Connolly arrived in Lady Lake Thursday afternoon, he had come from Heathrow where he was part of an investigation where a bear bit a woman. The woman had been walking her dog when the dog spotted the bear, yanked at its leash and pulled the woman to the ground. That’s when the bear bit the woman in the arm. It’s the third bear-bite incident in Seminole County this year.
Bears are trying to consume as much food as possible this time of year, preparing for the Florida-version of hibernation.
People ask why problem bears can’t simply be relocated to a “wilderness area where they won’t bother anyone,” according to FWC.
Unfortunately, areas that are large and remote enough to move bears where they won’t encounter people are rare in Florida. Relocated bears typically leave the new area, either to return to their original home or to leave an area already occupied by other bears. Some bears will wander through unfamiliar areas and cross busy roads, creating a danger to the bear and to motorists.
