By the time Kim Ring arrived at her neighbors’ yard that spring afternoon in 2022, their chicken coop was a flattened pile of lumber surrounded by feathers. The poultry had been raided by a bear. At the neighbor’s request, Ring and her husband headed into the woods abutting their home in the rural Massachusetts town of Ware, in the hopes of finding any fluffy survivors. What they encountered instead was a bear with her two cubs in a tree — the mother bear downing one of their neighbor’s chickens.
It was the first of what would be many bear encounters for Ring after she moved to a new house with a big backyard in Ware, where she could also raise chickens. She soon discovered that among her neighbors were the four-legged kind who viewed her flock as an all-you-can-eat buffet. “We knew there were bears around, but we didn’t anticipate interacting with them,” said Ring, who has since spotted bears munching on berries from her dogwood trees and chased them away from the outdoor shed where her cats live. “They do a lot of damage. It’s really scary.”
