A Bear Walks Into A Neighborhood

I still love Los Angeles. Will I ever be able to go back?

A black bear visited L.A.’s Eagle Rock area on the evening of March 3, 2020

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.

My own backyard was lined with a rickety privacy fence and my dog Rex would often press his nose against the spaces between the planks as small clusters of coyotes gathered on the other side, equally curious about him. While packs of coyotes are notorious predators for small pets, Rex was large enough that I didn’t worry. Are those your wild canine cousins? I took to asking him. (I asked Rex lots of questions, including “how do I look in this outfit?”) From there, I took to referring to the coyotes as “cousins.” The cousins are singing to you! I’d say to Rex when the nighttime quiet was suddenly punctured by the yipping of coyotes celebrating a fresh kill (probably someone’s cat). Later, when I moved with my then-husband to a house in the Eagle Rock neighborhood where that bear roamed on Wednesday, a flock of wild green parrots would occasionally descend into the magnolia trees that lined the sidewalk.