4 Answers

 Bears like Chili cheese dogs the best

As Colorado's black bears start readying themselves for a long winter's nap, they turn ravenously hungry and consume somewhere north of 20,000 calories a day before settling in.

For the bears around Bailey, 40 miles southwest of Denver, the choice of wild berries and tree bark or a trip to the trash bin behind the Coney Island hot-dog stand — where they can gorge on bags full of half-eaten hot dogs, hamburgers and ice-cream cones — is apparently a no-brainer.

"I've never seen anything like this. They've trashed our Dumpster like 30 times in the past two months," said manager Katharine DeLoach, who has worked at the hot-dog-shaped restaurant for nearly eight years, both in Bailey and when it was in Aspen Park.

"We strap down the Dumpster lid at night so they can't lift it up," she said. "But the bears have learned if they climb on top, they're heavy enough to crush the plastic lid and fall through."

The Colorado Department of Wildlife has done what it can to help the restaurant, including providing its owners with rubber buckshot and installing pepper-spray booby traps. Neither hazing device worked. Indeed, the pepper-spray contraptions have been triggered so often that their canisters are empty.

Bags and bags of trash have been strewn all over the place, including neighbors' properties. So now, the local police are involved, ticketing Coney Island owners Ron Aigner and Diane Weiscamp for littering. Both declined to comment.

"I feel bad for the bear," said Coney Island general manager Stephanie Henkel, who has asked DOW to relocate or kill what she believes is a lone ursine diner. "I don't want it killed. But it's getting more aggressive. He's crazy; he destroying everything. I think he's endangering people's lives."

DOW spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said there are several bears, not just one, feeding on the garbage and that the department has been doing all it can to stop them.

"The problem is

Kelly Bender, a supervisor at the Coney Island hot-dog stand in Bailey, employs some lumber in an attempt to reinforce the cover of the restaurant's Dumpster, whose consumable contents have been ravaged by at least one bear about 30 times over the past two months, according to the manager. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

they're getting fed, they're continually being rewarded," she said, adding that bears can smell food from up to 3 miles away. "We've done all we can to work with the restaurant, but they need to find a bear- proof container. We can't force them to do that."

Churchill said DOW won't relocate or kill the bears because they're not being aggressive toward humans.

The restaurant says it has requested bear-proof bins from its trash hauler, Mountain View Waste, which merely continues to repair the broken trash containers.

Perhaps Mother Nature will provide a temporary reprieve. The bears should den up between now and Thanksgiving, depending on when the snow falls.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13555531

I have provided a link to a website filled to the brim with useful information about wildlife in Breckenridge.  Please read and memorize the pertinent information.  Keep your hotdogs inside and locked up at all times. 

Click on this link >  http://blog.gobreck.com/index.php/outside/wildlife-in-breckenridge-what-you-must-know/ < This link right here.

Have a glorious one!

In Colorado, the bears will only eat 5 hot dogs. They're almost ready.

country bumpkin

I can smell them from here.

Ducky

:)

Don't feed them, b/c then they will keep coming around. Black bears don't usually kill people, but there was a story recently here in Michigan of a 12 yr. old girl who was walking on a path to her freind's house......and a black bear came out of nowhere and attack her. She got clawed and bit, but she played dead, and that's what they think saved her.  She was then worried that she let her soccer team down, but not being able to be there to help them win .