Five months after wildfires, it's still PTSD for animals: Pets trying to shake depression
My cheesesteak-shaped beagle used to go on strike during walks, but he's improving thanks in part to Eldon's tips. I wanted to write about that, but Eldon said he's mostly retired and doesn't need the publicity. His only new clients, he told me, are dogs who are still struggling with PTSD from the Eaton wildfire in January.
Come on, I implored. That's a story on its own.
Maybe so, Eldon said. Dogs are creatures of habit, he reminded me, as much as humans — or more. They like their homes, their neighborhoods, their familiar smells and routines. Rip all of that away overnight, and they're knocked off balance.
Eldon suggested I call Natalie Langan, owner of Trailhead Hounds, because her clients include displaced Altadenans and their discombobulated dogs. When Eldon showed me a photo of Langan, I realized I'd seen her running pack hikes on the Gabrielino Trail above the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with a garrison of 30 or more dogs in four-legged lockstep.
'I would say roughly a quarter of all the dogs we pick up for our pack hikes are dogs from Altadena who lost their homes,' Langan told me when I called.
Some dogs — and cats — have made multiple moves since the fire and had to get used to new surroundings over and over again. That can put them on edge and heighten their separation anxiety, Langan said, and if their owners are depressed or grief-stricken about loss and uncertainty, the animals absorb those emotions too.
'Dogs see the world in patterns. That's how we're able to train them,' said Langan, who advises clients who lost their homes to establish new routines for their pets. 'The No. 1 thing is to create a new normal, and that's for humans as well. My parents lost their home to the fire and I've been helping them' build structure into their days and stay on the move 'rather than sitting around the condo being sad about what's happening.'
When I first wrote about the impact of the fires on dogs, cats, chickens and goldfish, I noted that Anthony Ruffin and Jonni Miller's dog and two cats were badly shaken. Especially Mr. Thelma, a cat who refused to go outdoors at their temporary rental in La Crescenta.
Miller reports that Mr. Thelma, who was found wandering in the rubble of their yard several days after their home on West Palm Street in Altadena was destroyed, is OK, but still won't go outside.
I also checked back in with Jessica Davis, who runs Boomer's Buddies, a Malibu animal rescue that helped families track down strays that were scattered by the Palisades fires. She said multiple moves to temporary quarters have been particularly hard on pets.
'Yes, they can be resilient, but some animals carry trauma and they want to be back where they were,' Davis said. 'We're starting to see a surge of people saying, 'I lost everything and can't keep my animal'' until getting resettled.
Davis said she's currently trying to find someone to foster a Bernese mountain dog.
In Altadena, Sharon Moon and Kimbop, her 14-year-old Pomeranian, used to enjoy regular neighborhood gatherings with dogs and their owners, and Moon's mother would join her and Kimbop on sunset hikes along the Crest Trail.
'Everything is gone,' said Moon, including her home. She's staying in Silver Lake, planning to rebuild in Altadena, and Kimbop is doing pretty well but still adjusting to different sights and missing her friends. 'We all used to have so much fun gathering and chatting [in Altadena]. It was our little enclave away from all the madness.'
Meghan Malloy and her family, who lost their home in Altadena, moved three times before settling into a rental in Sherman Oaks. It hasn't been easy, because Malloy and her husband have a newborn, two cats (Felix and Mushu) and two golden retrievers (Arthur and Clementine).
The cats are OK and so is Arthur, but he misses his yard and his friends.
And then there's Clementine, who was 'a little anxious' before the fire, and more so ever since.
'She has been absolutely velcroed to me or my husband's side,' Malloy said. 'She was always a pack dog, and had to be with people, and with Arthur. But she has been so clingy, and gets so upset to be left alone.'
Levi, a 4-year-old mutt, suffered through 'a month of real instability,' said owner Jenn Burt, as they moved into temporary quarters with a series of friends in the Pasadena area. 'Having to get used to a new place every week … and not knowing what the rules were in each of the houses … was quite hard,' said Burt.
Levi had enjoyed sofa privileges in Altadena, but those rights did not travel with him. He's improving, but he's still more anxious than he used to be and rattled by fireworks in the nightly warm-up for Fourth of July.
Boudica, a shepherd mix, is 'definitely traumatized,' said Katie Jordan. When they lost their Altadena home, she, her teenage son, two cats and Boudica tried squeezing into her boyfriend's one-bedroom apartment, but it was a tight fit, and a rental in Glendale has been better.
Jordan once took Boudica back to their destroyed neighborhood in Altadena, before debris was removed, and realized that might not have been a good idea. 'It was heartbreaking,' Jordan said. 'She just ran around whining, like she was so confused.'
There is one activity, though, that always brings relief to Boudica: 'Being in a big pack is her dream, and she feels so safe,' Jordan said.
I know what Jordan means. Philly gets excited every time we get within three blocks of dropping him off with dog handler Burke Stuart, of Man's Best Friend, so he can run around with his pack.
On Wednesday morning, Boudica joined 23 other dogs on a Trailhead Hounds hike at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park. Langan was joined by two other trainers: her husband, Chase Langan, and Soyun Ahn.
Boudica had a lot in common with Cosmo, Freckles, Lucy, Ruby and Levi, all of whom either lost their homes or were forced to move out temporarily. But I couldn't have picked them out as the ones with issues. Tails were wagging and most of the dogs had that expression that looks like a smile, mouth half-open, tongue dangling. With plenty of grass, trees, dirt and hints of scatological delights in the air, they were in dog paradise.
The dogs are all trained not to pull on the leash, to stay in formation and to steer clear of rattlesnakes by sight, sound or scent. It was all very impressive, but I kept thinking Philly — who travels nose to the ground, zigzagging through the world — would have been kicked out of class.
About halfway through the hike, the dogs went off leash but stayed close. Two of them wrestled on the grass, and a few climbed onto a twisted tree trunk to pose for a group photo that would be sent to the owners.
All in all, it was a pretty therapeutic way to start the day. And not just for the dogs.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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Los Angeles Times
7 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
A Times investigation: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere
West Altadena was burning, and no one was there to save it. More than 40 Los Angeles County fire trucks surrounded the Palisades fire, where an inferno was entering its 17th hour. An additional 64 fire trucks fanned out across east Altadena and neighboring areas, battling a blaze that had sparked in Eaton Canyon nine hours earlier. But in west Altadena — where thousands of structures would burn and all but one of the 19 deaths from the Eaton fire would occur — there was just one county fire truck as the flames spread at 3:08 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to automatic vehicle locator data obtained by The Times. 'We were abandoned,' said Sofia Vidal, 57, one of more than a dozen residents interviewed by The Times who said they stayed dousing flames through the night with no firefighters in sight. 'I never heard a siren.' Six months after the fire, the anger is palpable, with residents of the racially diverse unincorporated area, long a refuge for Black families, convinced that they suffered from weaker fire protection than whiter, wealthier areas near the Palisades fire. The sense of neglect is so intense that nearly 1 in 5 residents believes the county Fire Department let the town burn on purpose, according to an Altadena-based public interest research firm that interviewed more than 1,200 residents. 'Am I grateful for firemen? Not at all,' said Vidal, who fled her home with her husband at 5:45 a.m. after burning squirrels began to fall from their palm tree. 'Did they fail me miserably? Absolutely.' The L.A. County Fire Department's top brass has described the destruction in west Altadena as almost inevitable. The wind was too intense. The flames were too violent. The whole night, unprecedented. But the vehicle locator data, which show that most county fire trucks didn't shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire, complicate the narrative. How much could have been saved, residents wonder, if firefighters focused on their neighborhood instead? L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the lack of fire trucks in west Altadena probably boiled down to 'human error' by fire officials who decided where the trucks should move. Those officials — from the county as well as other agencies — were part of the 'unified incident command' stationed for most of the fire at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. 'Why didn't we do a better job of dividing resources between east and west Altadena, right? That's a fair question,' Marrone said. 'What was going on? What were the people doing? 'Did people who were working west not accurately communicate the dire circumstances that they were faced with?' said Marrone, who said he was at the Rose Bowl that night pleading with agencies across the region to send more trucks to the Eaton fire. 'Or was there a lack of resources? Or were both sides of the fire equally challenging? ... I don't know which one of those it is. It's probably a little bit of all of that.' Marrone said it's possible that other fire agencies sent vehicles to focus on west Altadena, but his department didn't track their locations. The cascade of events leading to the tragedy in west Altadena began when the Los Angeles Fire Department failed to pre-deploy fire trucks to Pacific Palisades amid dire wind warnings, forcing the county to pitch in. But west Altadena suffered from more than being the last place to catch fire in a day full of infernos. The vehicle locator data, according to some former L.A. city and county fire officials, point to a failure within the incident command coordinating the county's response, led that night by Deputy Fire Chiefs Eleni Pappas and Albert Yanagisawa. A growing fire is broken up into divisions, with supervisors — often battalion chiefs — communicating the fire conditions in their divisions up the chain to incident commanders, who use the information to decide where to position fire trucks. Incident commanders, the former officials said, should pay attention to the 'big picture' — not just where flames are raging, but where they're headed. That means sending fire patrols — vehicles equipped with a pump, hose and water — to nearby neighborhoods to spot whether the fire has jumped with the wind. And it means quickly repositioning firefighters from the biggest eruption to small but growing ones, where they may have more impact. Only one county fire patrol stopped west of Lake Avenue, the dividing line between east and west Altadena, during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire, the vehicle locator data show, with assistant and battalion chiefs staying out of the heart of the neighborhood. Most county fire trucks didn't move from the Eaton Canyon area, where the fire first erupted, until west Altadena was well on its way to burning to the ground. Yanagisawa said incident commanders 'did their very best' to battle a fire that dramatically outpaced their resources, with hurricane-force winds pushing the flames in different directions throughout the night. But a former Los Angeles Fire Department incident commander said the data showed that too many firefighters were deployed like 'moths to a candle,' directed to swarm the flames immediately in front of them. 'Nobody stood back and looked at the big picture,' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss another agency's operations. 'It takes leadership and situational awareness to direct that as an incident commander and say, 'Hey guys, I understand you guys are fighting fire there. I don't need you there. Based on the map, weather, rate of fire spread and 911 calls we're getting, I need you to defend homes and evacuation in this other community.'' The automatic vehicle locator data, which The Times obtained through a public records request, track L.A. County Fire Department vehicles responding to the Palisades and Eaton fires on a minute-to-minute basis. The Times used the GPS coordinates to pinpoint every time a truck stopped. Fire trucks from the roughly 20 other agencies responding to the Eaton fire, such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Pasadena Fire Department, were not captured in the data, nor were county trucks that didn't have a vehicle locator system or whose system was not working. County officials said there could also be gaps in the data caused by disruptions in cell service. The Times has requested, but not received, vehicle locator data for some of the other agencies. The data provide a possible explanation for one of county officials' key failures. Residents west of Lake Avenue did not get an evacuation order until 3:25 a.m. Jan. 8 — more than four hours after flames were first reported in the area. East Altadenans got their first evacuation order at 6:40 p.m. Jan 7. Some former fire officials said the data suggest that firefighters may not have known of the embers flying into western neighborhoods. Ferocious winds grounded a county helicopter over Eaton Canyon almost immediately, leaving no bird's-eye view. On the ground, county fire trucks were focused almost entirely east of Lake. No county fire vehicles responded to the 911 calls trickling in from west Altadena early in the night, according to the data, though it's possible other agencies did. The county has hired the consulting firm McChrystal Group to investigate what went awry with the evacuation orders. The county Sheriff's Department and the county Fire Department, which both had first responders in Altadena that night, have said they shared responsibility for ordering evacuations. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department did not respond to an inquiry about where deputy vehicles were that night, and the agency has not fulfilled a request for vehicle locator data. While homes near the foothills around Eaton Canyon were mostly unscathed by flames, most of west Altadena was destroyed. Thousands of structures were lost. Eighteen people died there — the vast majority on blocks where a county fire truck never stopped. One additional victim perished just east of Lake Avenue. On West Terrace Street, despite three 911 calls, no aid came for Anthony Mitchell Sr., a 68-year-old amputee, and his son, who had cerebral palsy. On Monterosa Drive, Victor Shaw, 66, died fighting the flames with a garden hose after a neighbor called 911. On Tonia Avenue, Erliene Kelley, 83, died after calling 911 twice. Her son, Trevor Kelley, tried to rescue her around 6 a.m., inching through oily black smoke too thick for his truck's high beams to penetrate. He said he understood why no firefighters attempted it. 'The only reason why I went is because of my mom and pure adrenaline, but I can see that it would be impossible for them,' said Kelley, 59, who arrived to find his mother's home burned to the ground. 'They would actually be committing suicide.' The county started the day with firefighters to spare. Marrone, responsible for fire protection across unincorporated parts of L.A. County as well as roughly 60 cities, extended the shift of firefighters about to go home the morning of Jan. 7, leaving him with 1,800 on hand. Later in the evening, he ordered 50 strike teams from the state, bringing an additional 250 vehicles into the fray. When sparks ignited near Pacific Palisades around 10:30 a.m., county fire trucks raced to help the Los Angeles Fire Department, which had been caught flat-footed after staffing a fraction of its available vehicles. In a day full of failures, the city's staffing decision, experts said, was the original sin, creating a 'domino effect' that hamstrung the county's response to fires in its own territory. 'They pretty much used up their extra people to assist L.A. city,' said Rick Crawford, a former LAFD battalion chief who reviewed The Times' vehicle locator analysis. By 6:15 p.m., according to the data, the county had sent 47 fire trucks and more than 40 other vehicles to the Palisades fire. More than one-third were in Pacific Palisades — an area the city Fire Department is responsible for. With the fire still raging across the Santa Monica Mountains, those trucks stayed put when flames erupted in Eaton Canyon at 6:18 p.m., about 40 miles away. New county fire trucks flooded the canyon area to fight what would become the most hellish blaze of the day, with hurricane-force winds scattering embers in every direction. Trucks soon moved into the eastern reaches of Altadena and small pockets of Pasadena before fanning east into Kinneloa Mesa, Sierra Madre and Pasadena's Hasting Ranch neighborhood, the data show. Firefighters said they met pure chaos on every corner — residents in wheelchairs desperate to escape nursing facilities, residents begging for their families to be saved. With lives still at risk, some county fire leaders said, it may not have made sense to divert to the west. 'We did not have enough people to shift in masses from one area of Altadena to another,' said Dave Gillotte, head of the county firefighters union. 'The story very well could be, why did fire engines leave the area where we had people still trapped?' A little after 10 p.m., some county fire trucks headed toward Sylmar after reports of a third fast-moving blaze came in from the San Fernando Valley. 'You can't just say, 'I'm not sending anybody to the Hurst fire — let it burn,''' Marrone said. Marrone said he has not conducted an analysis of fire truck locations because the state has hired the Fire Safety Research Institute to do an independent review of the overall fire response. He cautioned that the vehicle locator data show only a partial picture, because they don't include dozens of trucks from other agencies. The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, for example, sent 68 fire trucks during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire but did not have locator information available for them. The Pasadena Fire Department had 12 trucks at the Eaton fire that night, in addition to patrols, but couldn't say how much time they spent in Altadena, according to Chief Chad Augustin. The unified incident command was led that night by the county, along with the U.S. Forest Service, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and several other nearby fire agencies. Marrone said that with his firefighters overwhelmed in the east, other agencies that came on scene later should have helped in west Altadena. 'I don't agree that it's L.A. County's responsibility to make sure we go into west Altadena,' he said. 'I'm not going to allow L.A. County Fire or the men and women of my department to take this on the chin as, 'Oh, the Eaton fire failure, the Eaton fire deaths, were solely the responsibility of Chief Marrone and his men and women.' No, in my mind, that can't be farther from the truth.' As firefighters battled three raging blazes across the county on Jan. 7, 911 dispatchers got the first clear sign at 10:50 p.m. that flying embers were threatening homes west of Lake Avenue. A 911 caller reported a flaming roof on East Calaveras Street. Two more calls from the street followed. By 3:25 a.m., when the first evacuation order for the area went out, 911 dispatchers had received 17 reports of fire from homes west of Lake Avenue. No county fire trucks responded to those homes, according to the data. 'Where these calls come in, they've got to assign somebody right away. 'Hey, yeah, we got reports of this fire jumping Lake Avenue. What's going on? Any engines over there?'' said a former L.A. County fire captain who reviewed The Times' analysis and requested anonymity to speak candidly about his former employer's response. 'We're taught to not grow roots, so to speak, in any one area — you've got to move.' Marrone said the addresses from the 911 calls should have all been relayed to the unified incident command. It's possible, he said, that commanders sent fire trucks from other agencies to those calls, which wouldn't have been reflected in the data. Soon, west Altadena was a hellscape. Dispatchers were fielding a deluge of 911 calls, many from residents trapped inside burning homes. 'I begged them to come. I imagine they have me on tape — I was crying when I said it. My life was going before my eyes,' said Daniel MacPherson, 70, who called 911 around 5 a.m. after the smoke grew so thick he couldn't see his hand. 'They said, 'We're busy.'' He escaped as his neighbors' home was engulfed in flames. Kim Winiecki, 77, and Evelyn McClendon, 59, didn't make it out. After the 3:25 a.m. evacuation order, some county fire trucks moved into west Altadena, but most stayed east, according to the vehicle locator data, even as the blaze worsened in the west. Between 5:30 and 6 a.m., 42 trucks made stops around the Eaton fire, but just seven of them in west Altadena. The number of fire trucks in the area gradually increased through the afternoon, the data show, though homes continued to burn throughout the day. Sylvie Andrews, 45, returned to her home around 11 a.m. after the winds had calmed — just in time to watch it go up in flames. 'It was fightable, and they were not fighting at all,' said Andrews, who said she was sympathetic to the difficulty of saving homes at the fire's peak but couldn't understand why she lost everything later in the morning. Many Altadena residents don't need data to be convinced that their homes probably burned with no fire trucks around. The marquee at a local Catholic school was vandalized to read: 'FIRE DEPARTMENT WTF.' Neighbors joke about defending their street with a 'bucket brigade.' 'Citizens with garden hoses — those are the only people who fought the fire,' said Steven Lamb, who said he spent the night pacing his street with his hose, battling flaming palm fronds and embers the size of baseballs. Lamb, a residential designer, said sheriff's deputies forced him to evacuate at 10:30 a.m. He turned on the news at 2 p.m. to see his house had burned to the ground. At 67 years old, he's now living with his wife in his childhood bedroom in his mother's home. Shawna Dawson Beer, who runs a popular Facebook group for Altadenans, described residents as in 'pitchfork mode.' 'I did not think there was any universe where it would be possible to turn a community against beloved first responders — this is it,' said Dawson Beer, 51. 'We were left to burn.'
Indianapolis Star
20-07-2025
- Indianapolis Star
Osterman: Longtime sportswriter Bob Hammel was a bridge for all of us, covering IU and beyond
BLOOMINGTON — My first occasion at meeting Bob Hammel came in his office at the Cook Medical complex on the far west side of town. Working on a project for Mike Conway's history of journalism class, I reached out to Hammel — this would be the last time he would allow me to call him anything other than 'Bob' — hoping for 20 minutes of his time. We sat for two hours. To know Bob Hammel was to have a friend and confidant in all weathers and on all subjects. For someone in this job, he was something even greater. Bob was a bridge for all of us, connecting more people, more moments, more places in time, than anyone else I've ever met. He was the keeper of the history of this place, and a willing, eager one. He leaves behind him an unfillable void matched in its size only by the remarkable legacy it reflects. Hammel died Saturday night at 88, his family told the Herald-Times. Anyone who knew Bob had at their fingertips the answer to seemingly anything. He was among the smartest, most learned people you could hope to meet. To the place he called home for nearly 60 years, he provided connective tissue binding generations of Indiana University, IU Athletics and Bloomington itself together. An IU student at 16, Bob eventually returned to Bloomington for good in 1966. Herman B Wells was still chancellor then. Seventh Street ran all the way through campus. Indiana had not been to the Rose Bowl yet. Bob Knight's hiring was five years out. For decades, Bob Hammel bore witness to the way this place, its people and its culture evolved. He chronicled it dutifully. His output was legendary — sometimes thousands of words per day, for a paper that through much of his tenure there still published in the afternoons. On the average football game week, for example, Bob would produce reams of copy on every inch of Indiana's forthcoming game. He would also often take time to write with care about newsworthy members of the opponent's roster. His reasoning was delightfully simple: Those players deserved recognition too. For IU fans across decades, he became a central figure in the story of their alma mater. He was an ever-present figure at Memorial Stadium and Assembly Hall, and across the Big Ten, in addition to consistent coverage of national events like Final Fours and Olympic Games. His career is perhaps most synonymous with the talented, tempestuous Knight, whose tenure all but mirrored Hammel's: The former served as IU men's basketball coach from 1971 to 2000, the latter Herald-Times sports editor from 1966 to 1996, when he retired. Doyel: Bob Knight didn't like many sportswriters. But he trusted Bob Hammel. Why? Spend time with him. I did The confidence they shared became an inexorable part of the story of Bob Knight's Indiana tenure. But it also conveyed upon Bob Hammel an importance to college basketball as a sport. At a time before social media could bridge the thousands of miles separating parts of the country that cared deeply for the sport — New York, New England, the mid-Atlantic, Tobacco Road, the Midwest, the West Coast — men like Bob bound the game together. Alongside other legendary sportswriters like Dave Kindred, Dick Weiss, Jim O'Connell and John Feinstein (to name just a fraction of a long, long list), Bob was a keeper of the game that meant and still means so much to the school he covered, the city he served and the corner of the world in which he lived. It was for good reason he was a charter inductee into the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame. That did not stop with retirement. He remained more than happy to pass on his knowledge and memories from a lifetime spent gathering both, accommodating students and sportswriters alike. He served the Monroe County Sports Hall of Fame, and for as long as he could, he remained a fixture at IU basketball games. 'One of the kindest and funniest': Bob Knight chronicler Bob Hammel dies at age 88 When word got around Bob had entered hospice care this spring, a procession of friends and former colleagues made their way to Bloomington to pay respects. It was impossible to venerate the man too much, even if he might have disagreed with that sentiment. The ripples Bob leaves behind flow across so many of us today, and will continue to indefinitely. But none of us can replace his impact fully. He was, as the many tributes flowing forth Sunday attested, one of a kind. And we will all miss him dearly.
Los Angeles Times
19-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Can coyotes and bears be friends? An Altadena odd couple has neighbors talking
Altadenans are no strangers to animal sightings — there are peacocks and parrots aplenty around town — but news of a coyote and black bear palling around town together recently has locals talking. First introduced to the public via a clip posted to social media by the Altadena Sheriff's Station, the duo have been spotted together multiple times, munching on garbage and patrolling the foothill streets left mostly desolate by the Eaton fire in January. While seeing a bear or coyote isn't abnormal in Altadena, observing them together is surprising, says L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy Andrew Garza, whose partner took the video of the unlikely pair when they responded to a call about the bear in late June. 'They were kind of just walking and hanging out together, which was really interesting,' he says. 'I think that because of the fires, both animals have lost their natural habitat so they're down here looking for water and food, but seeing them together painted this picture of them being just two friends, trying to get along and checking out the neighborhood.' Altadena resident Raimy Rosenduft says she captured the pair a week or so later on her front door camera (experts believe it's the same couple). In her clip, the bear and the coyote are seemingly enjoying the spoils of a spilled garbage can, surveying the neighborhood while they weigh their next move. While wildlife experts say it's understandable that viewers may see the clips and think 'check out this pair of cute, furry best friends,' they're quick to note that what's going on between the two species seems to indicate more toleration than affection. 'You can humanize your dog or your cat, but I think even that's a stretch,' says Steve Searles, a wildlife expert and author who Animal Planet once dubbed 'The Bear Whisperer.' 'Thinking that these animals love you or each other the way that you love them just isn't based on reality or fact. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but it's that kind of thinking that gets someone — either a person or more likely an animal — killed.' There's a less sentimental explanation for the team-up, Searles says. Back when he was working as a wildlife officer in Mammoth Lakes in the 1990s, Searles says he often saw coyotes sleeping outside bear dens. (Coyotes have also been spotted alongside bears in Burbank, although in seemingly less friendly circumstances, among other places.) 'It was like they were just waiting for the bear to wake up and go to work, because it was more economical for them to travel with the bear during its nightly route,' Searles explains. While bears are typically seen as apex predators, he says, black bears — the only wild bears left in California — are actually vegetarian-leaning omnivores, eating far more grass, tubers, roots and berries than meat. Coyotes, on the other hand, are opportunistic eaters, chowing down on whatever crosses their paths. Following a bear, who'll knock over a garbage can to lick out a discarded jar of peanut butter but may ignore chicken bones, could be a win for the smaller animal. Unless a black bear has cubs with it or is looking to mate, Searles says, they won't really pay the coyote much mind. 'Everybody's used to seeing grizzlies on TV catching salmon out of the air at the top of some waterfall, but black bears are one of the laziest animals on the planet,' he explains. 'They just want to walk around on your lawn, eating grass or daisies or other non-indigenous species of plants. It's just plain easier. They don't want to run for anything if they can help it.' Bear ecologist Chris Morgan says that, while he wouldn't use the word 'lazy' to describe black bears, he would absolutely call them efficient. 'Like all bears, they're out for the biggest number of calories for the least amount of effort.' Even if the pairing is less 'buddy animal movie' and more biological imperative, that doesn't mean seasoned wildlife observers haven't found something interesting in the footage. Eric Strauss, the executive director of the Loyola Marymount Center for Urban Resilience, says his group has studied coyotes in urban environments extensively. Still, he says, he's never seen a coyote with a bear. 'I'm an old scientist, but still this kind of stuff never stops being delightful,' Strauss says. 'We might think we have everything figured out, but the beauty of science is that you have to prepare to be surprised.' Observing the pair may help scientists understand more about how animals respond to trauma, like the Eaton fire that destroyed both homes and wildlife habitat. 'In the same way that fire is traumatic to humans, fire is traumatic to social animals,' Strauss says. 'A lot of these social animals, like coyotes, probably lost their partners or lost their offspring and are, to some degree, still in shock. Most social animals are able to experience all the emotions that humans do. They don't necessarily show it the same way, but I think knowing that creates a bond between us. These animals might still be wild, but, really, we're not as different as we would like to think we are.' In Altadena, where bear murals already dotted local stores before the fire, that sort of connection can feel extra special. Greg Mann, who's lived in Altadena for about 30 years and who's posted his bear sightings on the local Reddit page, says when he returned to his home in the Canyon Crest neighborhood earlier this spring, the area felt deserted, not just by people but by animals as well. 'Everything was so silent. There weren't a lot of people back and it was pitch black at nighttime,' he says. 'We weren't seeing any signs of wildlife and [my wife and I] were really concerned because the fire had traveled so quickly so we just weren't sure how all the animals had fared. But then we started getting deer in our yard again and other animals, and every single time a new animal comes through, it just feels so hopeful. Little by little, it feels like things are starting to get back to the way they should be.'
