A bear hanging out in a storm drain in Virginia

Happy Friday, DMV! It’s May 8.

I got an email last week from the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources with the subject line, “DWR Conservation Police Presents 2025 Awards.” I clicked to read … because you never know what you’re gonna stumble upon. Indeed, it was the fourth item in the newsletter that caught my interest with this photo.

“Hey Boo-Boo,” the headline said.

It told of a bear in a storm drain at a “warehousing facility” in Roanoke County, a 4-hour drive southwest of D.C. in the mountainous Shenandoah Valley. Details were scant. So I spoke yesterday with Ali Davis, the district wildlife biologist who responded to the scene. Here’s what she told me.

It began April 20, at a snack distribution facility on the outskirts of Salem. Staff spotted a bear “poking its nose out of a storm drain” in the site’s parking lot, she said. A worker at the facility sent the above photo to authorities.

An officer with the agency responded that day. It looked like a healthy “subadult bear,” about two to four years old. Authorities believe the bear entered a drainage pipe near a water retention basin and crawled up to the storm drain — a distance, Ali guessed, of roughly 200 yards. They suspect it was too tired or scared to go back through the pipe to get out.

Ali went with officers to the facility two days later. Staff there had spotted another bear about the size of a German shepherd running out of the pipe. Authorities believe it was a yearling that was with its mom — so it seems there were at least two bears at the site. The subadult bear was still in the storm drain. Ali lay on her stomach and peered in through a hole on the manhole cover on the storm drain.

“I could look down and see the whole bear. It had room to move around. It could stand up. It was seen moving from one [storm drain] to the other a couple yards away. You could see its body. It wasn’t panting. It wasn’t acting stressed. It was just hanging,” Ali said. “We tried some harassment to discourage it from staying there and try to get it to go down the storm drain pipe on its own.”

She stomped on the manhole cover, clapped her hands and spritzed bear spray at the drain to make the space unpleasant. But it was warm outside and cool inside, Ali said: “Sometimes bears just like to find a place like that dark and cool to hang out during the day.”

Ali returned April 30. The subadult bear was still there.

“At that point we’re like, this is a bit strange. This bear has been in here about 10 days now,” she said.

So they came up with another plan to lure it out using foods with strong smells: tuna, lemon mini powdered donuts and a strawberry extract-like concentrate that they put at the drainage pipe entrance.

“They have an incredible sense of smell — like seven times that of a bloodhound. We knew putting food at the entrance would really coax it out,” she said. “We don’t know if the bear was in there 10 days, but if it was, it would’ve been a hungry bear.”

Plus, it rained that day, Ali said. “The second it rains, and water flows down the storm drain, it’s no longer dry and cool — it’s wet and damp.”

The bear(s) left the storm drain later that day. Staff at the facility put a wooden plank across the drainage pipe to deter wildlife from entering, and they plan to put a grate on it eventually.

Ali said bear sightings in this region are common, as are human-bear conflicts, particularly in the spring when berries have yet to come out. Authorities advise residents to keep garbage and pet food secure and to take down bird feeders from Easter through Thanksgiving, when wildlife are more active, she said.

To report a human-wildlife conflict or a sighting in Virginia, call the state’s wildlife-conflict helpline at 1-855-571-9003.

In her eight years in the job, this was Ali’s first storm-drain bear.

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Lynn Abbott, 65, of Kensington, Maryland, sent in this photo she took last week while visiting the Butterfly Experience at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton.

“Upon entry into the exhibition, visitors are greeted by an amazing assortment of colorful butterflies from the Americas, Africa and Asia,” Lynn wrote in her submission. “The exhibition is open through September 7th, and I'm already planning a return visit.”

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