UPTON – Maple syrup, canned milk, dog food, Cheerios, Wheaties, a porcupine, and motherly love all played a role in the rescue of an orphaned baby bear last week.

That’s what Cyndy Scribner of Upton said when the bawling bruin climbed down a tree, ran to her, then climbed into her truck on East B Hill Road Wednesday.

“He was scared to death,” Scribner said Monday of the black bear cub. “He came down out of that tree crying and squealing like a baby and he went right to me.”

The cub had two porcupine quills protruding from its face and another from a leg.

Scribner, who said she taught the youngster to climb trees when danger threatened, believes the cub chose the wrong tree to climb Wednesday – one with a porcupine lodged in it.

After bringing the injured, emaciated bear home to her father’s house on East B Hill Road, Scribner contacted Maine Warden Rick Mills of Andover. He retrieved the cub Thursday morning. Mills, she said, took it to a wildlife biologist in New Sharon.

Mills could not be reached Monday for comment. Neither could the biologist.

Dawn Brown, a wildlife rehabilitator in New Sharon, said she has been expecting the cub in hopes of caring for it until the bruin can be released into the wild.

That’s good news to Scribner, who first saw the bear Sunday while driving on East B Hill Road after a nor’easter dumped 40 inches of snow on Upton.

“He was in the road when I saw him. I kept an eye on him and he was just too small to climb over the snowbanks. He’s just a baby. He should weigh between 35 to 40 pounds, but the warden said he only weighed about 12 to 15 pounds,” Scribner said.

Ignoring the axiom that people should not touch or feed wild animals, Scribner said she helped it over a snowbank, but it ran back into the road toward the opposite snowbank. It floundered until she helped it over that bank, too.

“It was just a little guy, but cute as a button. There was no way he could find anything to eat. You can’t just keep driving by and see it getting weaker and weaker,” she added.

That’s when she decided to feed it.

Scribner said she walked into the woods to the foot of a tree where the cub was hanging around and fed it tea and milk, boxes of Cheerios and Wheaties, peanut butter sandwiches and canned milk.

She stopped when moochers – four crows and a porcupine – arrived.

Scribner even trudged through the snow around the tree, making trails for the animal to more easily get through.

Then, when she noticed the cub was imprinting on her and acting unafraid, she worried what might happen when someone with less than good intentions found the bear.

“It didn’t seem to know how to climb a tree to escape danger, so I taught him. I ran at him until he climbed. At first he would just go up 10 feet and just quiver, but then he went up 40 feet,” said Scribner, who used to live with a wildlife rehabilitator.

The bear’s tree was five miles away from her home, but she faithfully made three to four trips a day to look after the animal.

Despite helping the bear for four days Scribner believes the cub was on its last legs.

“With the snow we’ve got now – 20 inches – he would never have made it. He was down for the count. He was starving and there was no way he could eat on his own, so I’m kind of glad I brought him home and gave him to a warden,” Scribner said.

After bringing the bear home, she fed it maple syrup, milk and a bucket of dog food. It spent the night in her truck, snuggled in a blanket.

“I know people are going to be upset that I fed him, but he’s alive and that’s all I cared about,” she added.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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