Black Bear Makes Takeout Meal Of Chelmsford Man's Chickens And Duck
CHELMSFORD (CBS) – Bernie Ready shakes his head as he points to the feathers littering his yard. "He ate a duck right here," he says. The feathers are remnants of a black bear buffet – and he wants to warn parents in his quiet Chelmsford neighborhood.
"My concern is getting the word out," Ready says, "because parents need to be careful with their children."
Ready thought he was dealing with renegade raccoons when he found one of his chicken's dead Tuesday night outside his backyard coop – where he's raised chickens and ducks for six decades.
But the next morning Ready discovered the marauder was a bit bigger, when he came face-to-face with the bear sitting in his backyard, chowing down on another chicken.
He shot some shaky cell phone video of the encounter – his hands trembling in fear the animal might charge him.
"They can be dangerous," Ready told WBZ. "If you saw him ripping apart that chicken, you knew it was nothing to mess with."
Experts suspect it's the same bear seen last week in neighboring Westford eating peaches from a backyard tree – and weighing more than 300 pounds. The bear was long gone by the time Ready discovered it had torn the door off his wooden chicken house and ransacked the place.
It gobbled down a half dozen chickens and a duck that his grandchildren consider pets. Ready is not sure what he'll tell the kids – and has moved the surviving fowl elsewhere.
"I can't have any more chickens now," he says, "until I know this bear is gone."
And since it was spotted feasting at a Littleton birdfeeder this morning, Ready is in no hurry to fix two gaping holes the bear left in his screened chicken pen.
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