The mystery is solved, it seems, when it comes to a photo of a black bear in which the animal appears to have a white head and back leg.
After we ran a story about bear last week, Rebecca Duchesne commented on Facebook that she could shed some light on the bear's unusual appearance.
She said the photo was taken in her backyard. The photographer was Ron Lafontaine of Val Caron, who she said is her neighbour. He brought the photo into Sudbury.com last week.
“It was in my compost beside the shed where I just emptied two bags of flour that I found beetles in and potato peels and under that was my house scraps,” Duchesne said on the Facebook page Valley East, where the link to the Sudbury.com article had been posted. “So it was probably damp and it rooting around in there ... maybe it was already white-headed when he got in there ... who knows. Coincidence ... maybe.”
Duchesne added she had a good laugh about the whole thing.
“I screen shot it so I can show my Mom ... she'll get a good giggle out of it ... hahahaha,” she said.
Sudbury.com also sent Lafontaine's photo to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry last week, and they came to pretty much the same conclusion as Duchesne.
“This is the first time we’ve seen this photo,” said Karen Passmore, regional outreach specialist with the ministry, in an email.
“While MNRF can’t confirm without capturing and seeing the bear, we suspect this is not a genetic phenomenon; rather, the bear may have gotten into a container coated with something white (we can see from the photo the substance is also on part of its hind end).
“It’s likely that this white bear will be black again in the spring.”
