A Bear Walks Into A Neighborhood
I still love Los Angeles. Will I ever be able to go back?
I awoke Thursday morning to the news that a bear was roaming the streets of my old neighborhood in Los Angeles. At that point there was only one photo in circulation, a shadowy image of a large black bear moseying past a garden wall in the northeast L.A. enclave of Eagle Rock. By the time I caught up with the story, the bear was already the subject of countless social media posts and even had its own Twitter account, where it was tweeting jokes like how angry is your cat that it has to stay in? and fly me from Eagle Rock to Mars @elonmusk.
I was both charmed and alarmed, a common response to cute-but-ultimately-disturbing photos or videos of wild animals in places they should’t be. Los Angeles is rife with critters that venture into populous and less-than-suitable human spaces. As urban sprawl colonizes the foothills and displaces everything it touches, it’s only natural (in the most unnatural sort of way) that creatures like bobcats, mountain lions and the occasional bear find their ways into backyards. In the first house I ever owned, a tiny Spanish bungalow in the hills of Echo Park, coyotes were so comfortable in our midst that my next-door neighbor routinely found one sleeping in her terrace lawn chair.
