'Nother thing, birds sit on INSULATED wires. Put one on an uninsulated wire and you have broiled birdie -- and this, too, sometimes happens when a bird perches on a place where the insulation is missing.

Bears climbing electric poles isn't much of a problem, j0hn. Only rarely do they come that close to people and people's things. Even if you wanted to hunt one you'd have to go way off in the woods and wilds.

Of course, a lady in the next town north of here (it's right across a street) looked outside one day about a week ago and saw a big "dog" eating one of her kittens. She was going to go out and chase it away when she saw the tail -- it was a cougar, a mountain lion, and had come into town and into her yard and killed two of her kittens for breakfast. She did NOT try to chase it away; she called the Fish and Game Department instead, but it was gone when they got there. They said that it was just a youngster, passing through.

Last January we had a moose here in downtown. They tranquilized it and took it out to where moose live, far from people.