Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There is a place in the remote northwards of Minnesota and North America.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: It's located near the town of orr, population approximately 300.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Outside this town is an area where normal rules are put to one side.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: It's a place where humans and wildlife meet. It's a special place, wholly unique and.
[00:00:15] Speaker C: Not without its controversies.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: This is the Vinscuti Wildlife Sanctuary run.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: By the American Bear Association, ABA for short.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: The ABA is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of black bears and all wildlife through education, observation and experience.
I'm your host, Philip Stubley and welcome.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: To the Bear Den.
Hello once again and thank you for joining me in the Bear Den. This is the second part of my chat with ABA co founder Karen Housman. If you haven't already, I recommend listening to the last episode where she detailed how she found her way to the Northwoods and met Vince and the bears, including notable ones like Duffy and Brownie. Karen had begun helping Vince out as his health started to decline. The question of what would happen when he was gone was on people's minds. And now we'll hear what happened next, starting with when Karen met two visitors to the property, Bill and Clarie Lee. It was to become a fortuitous meeting.
[00:01:16] Speaker D: One day, the day that Bill and Clare came.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to ask about that when, if you remembered the first encounter with them, I think it was.
[00:01:23] Speaker D: In 92 and they were just amazed. I remember the day when they first came. Vince had to go in town and I had to do something else. So I was getting back before Vince and at that point I had told Vince that if before the feeding, if I could bring some corn out into this one area that he hadn't been feeding in and I could put some there.
I was more interested in trying to thin the crowd down because then more and more people were coming. So if I could get these bears out into the woods, you know, people I felt would be a bit safer if I could just reduce the crowd of bears.
So it was the day Bill and Clare came. I don't know what they must have thought because that day when I came, Bill and Clare were there, Richard Smith was there, Lynn Rogers. There was a lot of, you know, pretty big time bear people there, a couple other photographers, but I flew in there, opened up my car, put nine buckets of corn in it and the bears at that time, they knew the routine. I come in, put it in my car, they start heading down to where they're going to go and I put a lot of corn and would get them out and Then Vince came in with his treats. He used to call it the show. He'd say, shall I start the show?
But anyway, after I put these nine buckets out, I think Claret came over and started to talk to me and said, you know, do you know, is, is Vince here or does he live here or. She said, he doesn't live here out here, does he? I said, oh yeah. He, I said he's going to come in here any minute. I said, and he. It'll be a spectacle that you've never quite seen in your life. And then Bill came over and he said this is just amazing. It's unbelievable that this is going on.
He just couldn't believe it and we all just sort of started talking and then Vince came in and it was just a regular night. And then he asked Bill and Claret to come in for coffee too. He seemed to be able to pick out the ones that were legitimately interested in bears or might be willing to help them. He almost deliberately kept us there longer than ever, probably till 11 o'clock at night talking, you know. And again, Bill and Clare were apologizing for being there so late. And he said, oh, that's okay, that's okay. I like company. And he says, and Karen here, she likes company too. And by that point Vince had given me a cabin but it was way across the field and I had some work done on it. I had a secure door put on. They were going to go. So I had asked them if they would just wait till I got across the field because I usually went over why Vince was still up or it was light. I didn't want to be walking around in the dark amongst the bears. But I used to walk over and I would say, you know, it's okay bears, it's only May, it's just me. So they would hear my voice and they were fine. I could do it, but I just thought if I. The ground wasn't level, if I ever fell or sprained an ankle, I could be laying there till morning and God knows what other animal might come in and decide to have dinner. But once Vince gave me the cabin, it made it so much easier for me to go up because I cleaned it all up. I could leave my sleeping bag there, I could leave some old clothes there. I had some canned food.
It just made going back and forth so much easier to not have to pack. I only had a pack of cooler of what cold stuff I was bringing up and that I would keep in Vince's place. But that was my first introduction to Bill and Claret. And then they started expressing too, what is going to happen now? He's getting so old. And I said, I don't know, a lot of people come in and ask. And he used to try to give me the land. He would say, I want to leave it to you. And then I had kids in college, I had a house in St. Paul that I still had a mortgage on. And I didn't see how I could possibly do it or what I could do. He just kept asking us and saying, you know, I know my end is near. Don't let me go to my grave without knowing my bears are safe. He would say things like that. And it was getting more and more desperate. So, you know, one day, you know, we kind of talked about the problems. I talked about my problems, why, you know, I couldn't do it on a full time basis. And even though Vincent said, you know, oh, I'll buy all your food, you could live up here, it's like, well, well, what do I do about my house in St. Paul, you know?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of considerations.
[00:06:27] Speaker D: Yeah, it was more than just, you know, I living in an old cabin. I mean, it would be a step up from being homeless. Vince buying my food, me living off the grid amongst bears.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Well, that was the dream, right?
[00:06:43] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, they proposed a couple of ideas and I did and I said, well, you know, I could actually take a little more time off from work. Maybe we could get people in here. So the following summer, we arranged for when I wasn't going to be there for people to come up.
We didn't tell Vince because he never liked to ask for help. But he said, boys, it's coming out of the woodwork. Everybody's coming up to help me. He says, I get somebody every day. He said the bears are probably sending him a message.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: So you, you, Bill and Clarie had been kind of coordinating and making sure that someone was always going to be there. Yeah, that's good.
[00:07:26] Speaker D: And then in, in April, I would go up and I would spend like maybe five or six days and another person might come up for three days or five days or whatever. And I just put out when I could be there and people said, okay, I can come these days and somebody these days. So there was somebody always there waiting because they start as early as April coming back.
Now, the winter before that, he fell and he couldn't get up in his cabin.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Was that winter 93?
[00:08:00] Speaker D: It was either 93 or. Yeah, it must have been 90. 93, yeah, he fell and two of his friends, Lola and I forget the husband's name. Schwartz went out and they found him on the floor and they got him up and nobody could get him to a doctor.
He was going to be fine.
And somebody then called social services and social services came out and they just very easily got him to go to the hospital. When they got there, he said he had a pack up to go, so they said they'd wait. He took a jar of mjb, coffee, a couple of pictures of Duffy, no clothes, just a flashlight to the hospital.
He was there for quite a while. Then he was released. But social services then got him this apartment in town, right? At first the plan was he would stay there, but he was going to go out to the trailer and live before that too. Before his fall.
I kind of thought that he was in congestive heart failure because he was having a hard time. Very short of breath.
He also had a bad cold. When he went to the hospital, sure enough, he had pneumonia and he was in congestive heart failure. Up until then, his medicine was garlic, and garlic and vinegar always work for him.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Well, I mean, yeah, garlic's pretty good.
[00:09:40] Speaker D: So almost. His fall, in a way, was a godsend because he was diagnosed and then he got the place in town.
And then when I went up to visit him in town, oh, my word, he was so happy.
He said, oh, come in, come in. I got to show you this. He said, look at this. And he flipped a light. He said, light? I get light.
He said, and look at this. He goes over, he turns the water. He said, running water. I said, wow, Vince, this is great. You're not used to it.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Welcome to the 20th century.
[00:10:15] Speaker D: Yeah. He said, and he said, hot and cold, Whatever I want.
And then he plugged a tv, and I think his nephew or somebody gave him a little tv. He said, look, look it. And he plugs the TV in and it comes on. And I said, oh, Vince, you know you can get other channels. And I. I showed him how to. No, no, this is fine. He said, this channel is good. He said, I just plug it in when I want to watch it and I unplug it when I don't.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: So then. So Vince is in town. So when did the sort of. The forming. What became. What went on to become the American Bear Association?
[00:10:50] Speaker D: It was. It was before that.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: That was before that. You already started planning.
[00:10:56] Speaker D: We kept saying goodbye to each other. And then I. I would go back. I'd go home and work and come back up and they'd still be there, but they would say, they're leaving tomorrow. But then they'd say, oh well, maybe we'll stay till Monday. And then Monday, you know, I would leave Sunday night because I had to go back to work. And they'd say, well, we won't be here. We'd make a big goodbye scene again and I'd go back and they, they were still there. I know at the end of it, Bill wrote Vincent a nice check because Vince was worried about taxes. He had to pay taxes on the land.
Bill said, I really want to do something for him. We've gotten some good pictures and I want to help him out. And we just kept saying what we, we all wanted to help them out. And we were there saying what we could do as individuals and they lived far off. I had a very flexible job.
I had time, they had know how and more money. I had two college kids at that point. So we just started saying what we could do, what we could do. And then this one particular day, Vince was like banging his cane on the floor and saying, I, I have to know my bears are going to be safe. This place has to go on. And you know, he, he wanted people. His big thing was to show people how bears really were. He said, they're. People are too afraid of them. He said, they're killing them. He said, well, I used to kill them too. I used to be afraid of him. But he said, I learned and I want people to learn. So this one particular day, it was like we looked at each other and it was, we kind of just said, you know, Vince, we'll, we'll do what we can do. You know, we kind of promised him we would do something.
And boy, he seemed like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. And we were then saying, well, I'll do this, I'll do that.
You know, Bill was really more business minded type and you know, he says, you know, we've, we have to secure the land, we have to form a nonprofit organization and various things. Somebody asked me one time, how did you feel after or after you, you must have been relieved after you said you were going to take, take it over. I said no, we were scared. We had made a promise, but we, we didn't have a plan yet. Usually you have a plan and then you make a promise. That was how, how it started. And it was, you know, I, I get the time. Might not be saying everything in the exact order, but it was, it was right after we had promised. It was that winter and I guess it was 93 that Vince Felon Couldn't get up off the ground. Just we were gathering people and, you know, who could do what.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: And it all kind of organically came together. It sounds like.
[00:13:58] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it did.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: As it comes back to you, just tell me. It's all interesting.
[00:14:03] Speaker D: I know at my age, I guess I'm lucky I even remember any of it.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: I know you said you. You didn't really have a plan, but like, what were the sort of first months after you. Essentially you and Bill and Clary had taken over running the area and forming the aba. What, what were the first months of running the organization like?
[00:14:21] Speaker D: Well, Bill had arranged for a friend of his who was in college, Lee J. To come up and help because I then had switched my days around where I could go up for a large stretch of time and then have five days off in a row.
And later that changed where I could have nine days off and just work five days. But that's a whole other story.
So Lee Jae came up and he stayed on the ground. And mostly at that point it was, you know, feed the bears. The bears had to be fed and start to clean up the land. And Lee J. Was starting to pull stuff out of the woods and we put it on the other side of the cook shack. A lot of, you know, oh, there was like old stoves in the woods, old refrigerators, old pots and pans with no bottom, rusted out. And then there was the outhouses and just all kinds of stuff. When I first went there, I tried to keep the meadow, what we call the magic circle. I did clean that up really well. And a little bit along the side road, Vince was a little bit not so sure of that because he said I could be raking away some of the bears dinner as I'm raking and cleaning.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: I'm sure they'll find it, if.
[00:15:43] Speaker D: That'S what I used to say.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I mean, we've talked a lot about Vince. I was like, do you want to talk about some of the first bears that you met, like ones that you connected with?
[00:15:52] Speaker D: Sandy was one of my all time favorites too. Yeah, she was just. She had cubs that year, that the first year, and I was there and I saw them grow up and Peanut was one of her cubs. But I used to be able to sit on a bucket and just watch her interacting with her cubs, and she was fine, you know, just letting me sit at a distance and I just started noticing things that she was doing and. And then one of them, Peanut was the smallest one. So I.
And then when Peanut was About I think maybe five. Peanut had three cubs, two brown and a black. We named them Tom, Dick and Harry. I named them Harry. The following year came to be a. We realized. Was Harriet all right? Oh, she was always into something. If there was ever something going on, Harriet was always at the scene. You know, if a ladder was knocked over and crashed into something else, it was Harriet. And she got to be a favorite of many people too.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Once you took over and you kind of introduced rules like say you couldn't touch the bears anymore, couldn't hand feed. Was there a lot of discussions about that?
[00:17:15] Speaker D: Yeah, there was. Even I hated it at first. I realized that it had to be. We couldn't let it go on. Some of the things people were doing. I mean, bringing out a bottle of whiskey and holding up and getting a bear drunk and laughing.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: So. Yeah, you obviously cleaned up the diet as well.
[00:17:35] Speaker D: Yeah, we had a. Toned down on that because Vincent assisted, you know, certain things, so.
Oh, he used to claim that a muffin had to have coffee grounds and eggshells and he complained that we. We weren't given. He. He eventually stopped doing it too.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: So.
[00:17:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: What, what were some of the other sort of challenges you kind of had.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: To overcome in those initial date.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Well, years.
[00:18:03] Speaker D: Well, it was really a big one. You know, people were, were mad that they couldn't walk amongst and touch the bears. You know, we, we really cleaned up their, their food source and got more things that they should eat.
Expenses got went up. That was one of the challenges.
One personal one for me is I used to be petrified of bees and there was bees all over the place. And I quickly. Before that, if I saw a bee, I would just run and jump and you know, and I knew that I better not dare do that in front of a bear. God knows what he's going to do. So I quickly. They kind of taught me those bees aren't really going to hurt you, Karen. Just stay still.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: So obviously over the years you've watched the organization grow.
What are your feelings about that?
[00:19:00] Speaker D: I'm just. I'm amazed, I'm proud, I'm happy.
Sometimes I almost feel like I did something in life.
I had a mission and I did it.
I sometimes think if I ever end up as an old lady. Well, I am an old lady now. If I ever go to a nursing home and I start telling my stories, I'm sure they're going to think I'm delusional.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: You mentioned how your family weren't too keen on you going out to see bears, right? Back at the start. What do they think now? Or what did they think when you.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: Pretty good, actually. My brother, who was the worst, who said he would not go anywhere. I mean, he was almost mad advising me not to do this. He sees bears now. He looks for bear sign. I think now that they're pretty okay with it, almost proud in a way, you know, because they'll occasionally send their. Their friends, you know, a picture, you know, mothers doing this or that or.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: What do you think Vince would say if he could see?
[00:20:04] Speaker D: I think he would be really happy now. One thing, I was happy that a lot of this took place while he was still alive. He got to see his dream coming true. He was a legend in his own time. And even the way people in town reacted to him. When I first went up there, it was kind of tongue in cheek, like, you know, God, yeah, Vince. Or.
Yeah, they're going to find him dead someday out in the woods type of thing. Toward the end there, if they.
He would go into a. He liked a certain seat in Patton's and on Patton's would reserve that table for him for breakfast.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: That's the cafe. Yeah, it's still there. Yeah.
[00:20:55] Speaker D: When they knew it was his birthday, they. I think another one of the. You don't know if it was Patton's or the. Or cafe. There was a couple of them at the time. They gave him a piece of blueberry pie with a candle on it. So he. He kind of was gaining acceptance.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: What about. What is it about the sanctuary that you're most proud of? If any notable moments or occasions came to mind?
[00:21:17] Speaker D: Peanut wasn't back yet for a while. And this happened several summers. And the day I came back, Peanut would come in. It's like, did she smell me somehow? Did she know my car? It's just I come and then Peanut comes in. Another strange thing. I. Well, it's not really strange, but that. Okay, Sandy was the mother of Peanut. When Peanut had babies, Sandy hung around watching over Peanut and the babies.
Sometimes Peanut would go off somewhere, put the cubs up a tree, and Sandy would lay at the base of the tray. And it wasn't just this group. There was many times I saw the grandmother bear watching over its daughter and its babies.
Now, the mothers are always fine because they know the. That that's it. But the babies don't realize it's their grandmother. And they're hooting around, scooting. And I went one time, there was a bunch of peanuts, three of the peanuts cubs up in the tree. And Sandy was laying at the base of the tray and peanut was off, and they were kind of like they're way up a tree, but they were kind of like hoofing down at her, like, like, get out of here type of thing.
And that's. That's happened with many bears. And another time, two bears that were really good friends as yearlings. One came in first and a couple of weeks later the other came in. And when they spotted each other, they just ran to each other and just stood up and just started playing.
And I think the only reason that they're considered solitary animals is because they have to eat so much.
So, you know, and they have to kind of defend their food sources.
At a berry patch or, or at Vinces, there's stuff to eat and they don't have to defend it. And they can play and they can socialize. So I think truly they would rather be a social animal. But in the total wild, they can't bake. They're. They're just too busy just hanging on to life.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Is there anything we haven't really talked about that you.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: You want to mention?
[00:23:41] Speaker D: I retired three years early so that I could be more involved in it. I mean, it was almost like every minute was from April till October was work in the sanctuary.
One time my kids told me, you know, mom, you haven't been around for 10 mother's days.
I said, well, I think all the time you saved, you didn't have to bring me a lunch. Lunch or anything.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, there's that. Look at it that way.
[00:24:18] Speaker D: I mean, they always got me something, but, you know, they'd have to come over on Monday or another day. They give it to me before I. Sometimes they'd give it to me before I would go up because they thought I could use it. They even delivered things to me at work because they said that's the only time they knew exactly where I was. Oh, and when I first went up them, they did worry because there was no way that they could get in touch with me and they wanted to know some way. And I couldn't think of anything. And meanwhile, some of the Vince's friends from the reservation work, I mean, I knew the reservation was there and I said, well, if it's anything extremely important, like a death or something, I said, if you called the reservation and asked to talk to, I don't know, maybe their chief of police or whatever, I think that somebody would drive over and get me safe. But I said, it has to be a real emergency, not that we need milk at the house, you know, yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Sometimes that is an emergency, though.
[00:25:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
I said, it's really got to be an emergency. And I said, I don't want you bothering them for every little thing. So they never did have to call, but the story they used to tell people is, yeah, our mother goes up there and she's in the woods with all these bears. If we have to get in touch with her, we have to call the reservation, talk to the chief and he'll get somebody to drive out and give her a message to call home. Somebody asked one of them one time, what do you think of, of your mother doing this? And they said, nothing my mother does would surprise us.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Thank you once again to Karen for generously giving her time to chat to me and share tales of the old days. Now, looking forward into the next episode, we're going to be hearing from you. That's right, as I go through listener feedback and any questions you may have sent in. For those that don't know, details on how to do that are in the end credits. So I can't wait to hear what you've all got to say. So we'll see you then.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: The Bear Den the American Bear Association Podcast was written and presented by me, Philip Stubley. The music was composed by React Music. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, including Karen Housman, Bill Lee, Clary Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer, and Angie Page. You can find out more about the American Bear association at www.americanbear.org. you can find Vince Treaty Wildlife Sanctuary on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask questions and submit comments about the podcast to pswericanbear.org the ABA is a special circumstance. We do not condone feeding wild animals. If you enjoy this podcast, help support the ABA either by donating, becoming an ABA member, symbolically adopting a bear, or come visit the sanctuary during the season and say hello.
