"So You Want to Be a Polar Bear Wrangler?"

"The job in Churchill, Manitoba keeps getting harder, thanks to climate change."

"It was 2 a.m. when the phone rang. I was in a sleepy daze, but figured someone was calling to report a polar bear in town. I was staying, after all, at the bear house in Churchill, headquarters for the Polar Bear Alert Program run by Manitoba conservation officers.

What had a bear done tonight? Broken into a house? Threatened people on their way home from the local bar? Mauled someone, as a man nearly had been the night before when a bear tore through the front door of his house?

I'd slept in my clothes, so was ready to jump into the pickup truck before officer Rob Kraychuk took off into a blizzard. After an hour, we circled back to find fresh tracks in the driveway suggesting our bear had been by the back door of the bear house just minutes earlier. Kraychuk revved the engine and we set out again."

Ed Struzik reports for The Tyee November 16, 2015.