Recordpub.com - Black bear spotted in Streetsboro: Rips hole in wall of S.R. 14 home

A bear ripped a hole in the wall of a home on S.R. 14 in Streetsboro, exposing the back side of a dishwasher inside the home.

Streetsboro police shot this photo of a bear they spotted walking around Route 43 in Streetsboro. Residents are being warned to leave it alone if they see it.

By Miles Jung-Kilbreath

Gateway News

STREETSBORO — Brenda Weingart expects raccoons to go through her trash, but when she woke up at 3 a.m. Tuesday to the sound of a creature rummaging through her garbage, she knew it was no raccoon.

“We saw a bear walking around our yard,” said the Diagonal Road resident.

“When I called police, I think they must have thought I was crazy since I was calling about a bear at 3 a.m. When they came to look for the bear, they found it sitting on my deck,” she said.

Streetsboro Police Sgt. Darin Powers said the bear has been seen around the city the past three nights. The department is advising residents to leave it alone.

The bear also was seen climbing a tree behind the S.R. 14 Taco Bell on Wednesday and near Maplewood Nursing Home on Thursday, Powers said.

Although Weingart said she found a claw mark on the outside of her house, she may have been lucky.

Jamie Graham of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division, said a S.R. 14 homeowner reported a bear around 4:30 a.m. Friday.

“The homeowners heard the noise and thought it was just from the thunderstorm, so they went back to sleep. They didn’t discover it was something else until the morning,” Graham said.

Steve Lenart identified himself as the S.R. 14 homeowner.

The bear “knocked out the basement window, and you can see muddy paw prints all over the glass,” Lenart said. “He clawed out a screen window that was over 6 feet high. There were claw marks all over the house.”

Graham said the bear removed the siding from a wall outside the kitchen, damaging the dishwasher from the outside. Graham said it was probably because he smelled food from the dishes.

Graham said the bear is probably a young male black bear that has been kicked out by his mother to find his own territory, which normally happens during the summer. She said black bears are normally shy around people, but can still be extremely dangerous.

“If people see it, they should stay a good distance away,” she said.

Residents should also keep pet food inside and bring in bird or animal feeders, Graham said.

While Powers said he assumes the sightings in Streetsboro were all of the same bear, he said he can’t guarantee it. Nor has it been determined whether this is the same bear that was seen in Kent on Sunday, he said.

“I’ve been here 12 years, and this is the first bear sighting in Streetsboro,” Powers said.

Weingart said she first heard about the bear Tuesday when her son and his friends saw it in the woods behind their home. She said the bear fled deeper into the woods when it saw them.

On Tuesday, Weingart said the bear was outside her home for a “good amount of time.” She said the bear also jumped on the edge of her above-ground pool and took a drink from it.

The bear left the area after it went over to her mother-in-law’s house next door and disturbed a hornets’ nest.

Graham said the wildlife division normally waits to see if a bear will leave an area on its own, giving it “three strikes” before trying to remove it. She said at first they try to scare it off with firecrackers or by shooting it with rubber bullets, which only bruise the animal. If the bear still stays in the area, they will trap it and try to relocate it to a forested area elsewhere in the state.

Powers said if people see the bear, they should call police at 330-626-4976. He said police are tracking its position.

The Gateway News is a sister publication of the Record-Courier.

34.	Posted by Molly Coddler Exposer August 8, 2009
	Kent Sheetz: We couldn't possibly have the Exposer family reunion in Streetboro, not with that Brett McClafferty fellow stirring up all that hate and discontentment there. We always choose a calm, peaceful, apathetic community for our reunions. That way the boys can entertain themselves stirring up their own hate and discontentment. See that Mr. McClafferty? Not only is Streetsboro losing out on the municipal court, but now, because of you, it is losing out on the Exposer reunion! Over course, we never have it in the same place two years in succession. The local memories won't allow for that. So we always wait at least 10 years before we reuse a community. The favorite pastimes at the Exposer reunion are the political sign swap and the liberal roast. In the first the boys go through the community and move the campaign signs from one yard to another. Typically, they will move a Republican sign into a yard to block a Democrat sign. They then wait in their van watching for the Republican discover his sign missing. He will usually see that it has been moved to the neighbor's yard and will go to retrieve it. When he gets close to it, they boys lay on the horn to rouse the neighborhood. When the Democrats see the Republican and the sign in their yard, they get pretty excited. They've actually videotaped them come out, guns a-blazing, in a manner that would make Dick Cheney proud. One even dropped a book, "How to Avoid the Overthrow of Government by Electoral Means" by Karl Rove, that he had been reading. In the other event, the liberal roast, the boys all gather their laptops together and search the local newspaper websites for liberal content. When they find it, they FLAME it, unleashing a torrent of epithets that would wilt a cactus. After they've been drinking a while, they'll get to flaming each other's posts. Then the real fun begins!

26.	Posted by Molly Coddler Exposer August 2, 2009
	Oh, my no, not Hillary's village. That village would have Michael Jackson in it and I would never permit my children to live within a hundred miles of his bed. No, it was an entirely different kind of village, one that would never have permitted the likes of Hillary to remain in its bounds, that was crucial to the upbringing of the children. In their early years the children would spend summer with their grandparents in a coal town in West Virginia. Grandpa Exposer was retired from the mines and, after redeeming his soul from the company store, contented himself with story telling and wrestling with his pet bear. He loved to read to the children newspaper accounts from the days when his father was a lawman in that town. These tales about the involvement of the Exposer Family in the preservation of the peace in the community had much to do with the formation of the children. Here is one of Grandpa Exposer's favorites. MURDERERS BREAK JAIL.—RECAPTURED AFTER AN EXCITING CHASE BY HUNDREDS OF CITIZENS. SOMERSET, West Virginia, Sept. 16, 1889—This community was thrown into the most intense excitement to-day at noon by the escape from the rickety jail of the Hawksley brothers, who shot and killed Farmer Umberger, after robbing him of $16,000. Sheriff Rush Limbaugh had left town early in the morning, taking an insane woman to Dixmont. The jail, with twelve prisoners, all desperate criminals, was in charge of Deputy Sheriff Milton Exposer. The hour was noon, and the day watchman, William Kifer, had gone to bring a pail of water for the prisoners. Upon the return of Kifer with the water, the Deputy Sheriff proceeded to pass him into the exercising and dining room of the jail where all the prisoners, including the Hawksley boys, were congregated for dinner. As Kifer stepped inside, Joe Hawksley, with two cocked revolvers in his hands, slipped past him and confronted Deputy Exposer in the outer hall. Dave Hawksley immediately followed Joe, the guard with the water having in the meantime been covered by a revolver by Jonas Fetty of Sharpsburg, who is awaiting the action of the Grand Jury for the shooting of Dread Scott of the East End. A scuffle ensued between Joe Hawksley and Deputy Exposer when Joe, finding his planned escape was to be a failure through Exposer's persistent courage, shot the deputy twice through the body. He then released himself from Exposer's grasp and, closely followed by Dave, hurriedly left the jail by the front entrance. The deputy staggered to his feet, closed and locked the jail door, and, following the murderers to the front yard of the jail, gave the alarm and sank exhausted from the shots to the ground. The murderers quickly jumped the fence surrounding the jail, darted down an alley to North Street, fled west through North Street, and reached a dense woods near town. By this time the whole town was alarmed, and 500 persons, with all sorts of weapons, were in hot pursuit. As the criminals only had three minutes start, the chase was close and hot. The Hawksleys, having gained the woods, disappeared from view in the dense foliage. Soon, however, a shout went up that Dave was discovered up a tree. This was true and the scoundrel was speedily captured. An hour later Joe was captured and the procession, now numbering about eight hundred excited people, headed for town. Ropes were procured and a strenuous effort made to lynch the criminals, but through the active efforts of some cool and determined heads, this was frustrated and the Hawksley boys were again safely landed in jail. The Deputy Sheriff, a brave man and an estimable citizen, lies at the point of death from the wounds received at the hands of the murderers. An excited and infuriated mob surrounds the jail and it is liable to be broken into and the criminals hanged before morning. A careful search of the cells of the prisoners, made directly after the recapture of the Hawksleys, unearthed three more revolvers. The great conundrum is how this arsenal of six revolvers came into the possession of the prisoners. The relatives and confederates of the Hawksley boys had been hanging around the town and jail for several days, and there is no doubt that a deep-laid plan of escape had been hatched.