XENIA TWP — A woman got quite the surprise on her morning walk.
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It was the sighting that had Rita Baxter calling her neighbor for a ride to finish her morning walk.
“I was headed home; this bear comes out of the field, he sits down and looks at me, and I stop and look at him and just started backing up. My voice is saying, ‘don’t run, don’t run,’” Baxter said.
She said she wasn’t afraid and the bear didn’t seem aggressive.
“I started backing up slow and took his picture, and he took off the other way,” Baxter said.
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She grabbed a few videos from her neighbor’s car.
Turns out the bear Baxter saw Tuesday along Foust Road near US-35 and Bickett Road was a black bear.
“It looks like a young male, so probably a 2-year-old male,” Brett Beatty, Wildlife Management Supervisor with ODNR, said.
He has been on ODNR’s radar for a few days.
“We’ve kind of been tracking this, what I assume is the same bear, for about a week or so,” Beatty said.
Beatty said ODNR has had reported or confirmed sightings twice near Hillsboro last week.
One east of Wilmington on Saturday, six miles southwest of Jamestown on Monday, then Tuesday morning in Xenia Township.
“It’s typical for behavior of a 2-year-old male this time year; bears of that age, they’re separating from their mother. They’re out trying to find their own territory, maybe a mate, and they’re just roaming,” Beatty said.
Beatty said black bears are native to Ohio and young ones can roam 10 to 15 miles a day.
ODNR will monitor his trip.
“As long as he’s not chasing anybody, threatening somebody or anything like that and keeps moving and minding his own business, we’re gonna let him keep on moving,” Beatty said.
After Baxter spotted him on a trek of her own, she won’t soon forget.
“Thought it was cool. I walk every morning; I look for skunks, raccoons, coyotes, deer. Never in my wildest dream would I dream that I would walk up on a bear, and he probably felt the same way,” she said.
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