BGSU Magazine Summer 2011

One summer evening back in the mid-1970s, a young woman who was working as a ranger in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia got a huge surprise. It happened as Connie Hudson (later Connie Backlund) was taking out the trash near her living quarters at Shenandoah National Park.

As she moved in closer to the trash barrel, she was startled to see a large, furry creature examining its contents.

They looked at each other for a few seconds. Then Backlund made a prudent decision. "It was a black bear," she says today, recalling that long-ago evening in the Shenandoah. "But this wasn't just any bear; this was the mega-bear."

[View Magazine Flipbook for complete article, flipbook pages 10-11]