In this Saraland neighborhood, it’s common to see a bear - or bears - roaming the streets. On Thursday, though, it was different.
Her neighbor’s home is several houses down and just happens to be part of her daily route.
“I have seen this bear a lot of times over the past couple of weeks, especially,” she explained. “It can be morning, afternoon, middle of the day. It doesn’t matter. Messick estimates she’ll see a bear eight out of every 10 times she is in her neighborhood, which is off Celeste Road, roughly a mile from I-65.“It really feels like we are living harmoniously with each other. I literally saw a man jogging on our street toward my car as I was leaving the neighborhood, and, after I passed the man jogging, is when I saw the bear. The man was on the same side of the road as the bear. I almost feel like the man didn’t even notice the bear.
“The owner had a bird feeder previously, but it was a lot shorter,” she explained. “One of the last pictures I had taken, the bear had torn down that old bird feeder. It was at a height where the bear could sit and eat from the bird feeders. “The neighbor, I guess, was trying to outsmart the bear and got a huge pole. All of the bird feeders are set so much higher. I think today he just said, ‘I’m not having that.’”“We’ve had not had any incidents, and, hopefully, we won’t,” she said. “I think people do their thing, and they leave the bears alone. And the bears seem to leave us alone. I don’t think anyone feels threatened or frightened. We just know not to get up in their space.