These guys should have come to me for advice: Bear law happens to be a specialty of mine. I’m good with monkey, ape and Sasquatch law too.

COOS BAY, Ore. — For nine days, Rocky and Jonathan Perkett heard a lone black-bear cub wail from its hiding spot in a Coos County logging site.

They could drop a tree on it or rescue it. They chose the latter, and for two years the bear was like family. But when the authorities got wind of it, there was trouble a-bruin.

The father and son named her Windfall and raised her for two years. The men shared pizza and Dr Pepper with the bear and gave her free reign of their home in the woods outside Coos Bay. The bear slept in Jonathan Perkett’s bed, took showers and even had her hair blow-dried, Rocky Perkett says.
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“Is there a law against a bear running around in your yard?” Perkett says. “Doesn’t she have rights as a bear?” The Perketts plan to hire an attorney and hope a glitch in the Oregon State Police’s search warrant will get the case tossed out, and in the best of cases get Windfall returned to them.

“The law says you can’t hold wild animals in any way,” says Wildlife Administrator Ron Anglin of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

The Perketts maintain Windfall never was “held” or locked in a cage. They simply opened their house to her, Rocky Perkett says. She could come and go at will, he says. She learned to work the doorknobs, he said. “Everything they done here was unlegal,” Rocky Perkett says. “Since it’s all unlegal, I hope they will bring her back.”

Best of luck, Rocky. I hope you get her back too.