A black bear attacked and killed a pet donkey on Fuller Mountain Road in Kent on May 21.
Megg Hoffman said she did not hear any noises the morning she found her donkey, Radar, dead and two of her other three donkeys hurt but there were signs of a bear on the property days earlier.
The week before Radar was killed Hoffman found bear paw prints in her barn and it appeared the bear had broken in, but did not hurt the animals.
She believes it was the same bear that returned a week later and killed Radar.
Radar and weighed approximately 270 pounds and officials with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimate the bear weighs about 300 pounds.
DEEP set a trap to try and catch the bear, but it was not successful so they removed it after about a week.
“If you don’t catch an animal within that time, you’re either not likely to catch it and the bear’s moved on, or every day that goes by, there’s less likelihood that you know for sure if that was the bear involved in this particular attack,” Dennis Schain, spokesperson for DEEP, said. “If you get it right away, it’s probably the one that was there because it’s coming back for more.”
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Hoffman said the donkeys typically are in a fenced-off area. She has now added an electric fence and is putting the donkeys in the barn at night.
Hoffman said she wants the bear killed.
