The routine at the Wapiti Elementary School west of Cody is much like that at any other rural Wyoming schoolhouse.
Except the schoolgrounds are surrounded by a bear-resistant fence, and the children sometimes have to run “grizzly drills.”
“Our recess teacher goes out with a whistle. They blow it three times in quick succession. The children know what that means; they run to the door and go inside immediately,” Elise Cole, the school’s lead teacher, told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
The fence is roughly 8 feet tall and “is different than your normal chain-link fence,” Cole said.
The wires are spaced in such a way that a grizzly shouldn’t be able to climb over it and get into the schoolyard, she said.
A can of bear spray is also kept readily available in the front office of the two-room, K-5 schoolhouse.
Luckily, no grizzlies have tested the schools safety measures yet.
Grizzly Down By The Red Barn
But there are grizzlies nearby, and lots of them.
On Monday, a grizzly was hanging out just across Highway 14-16-20 from the Red Barn country store, roughly 2 miles west of the school.
The bear was drawn in by a roadkill deer carcass, Manda Siebert told Cowboy State Daily.
“It was a little intimidating. I’ve lived here almost my entire life, and I’ve never seen a grizzly right down by the store,” she said. “I’m used to the bears being around, but it was something else to see one right from the front porch.”
She and her husband, Fred, run the store and live onsite with their three children. The oldest child has already gone through the Wapiti school, the younger two still attend the school.
Game wardens had to haze the grizzly away from the side of the highway twice on Monday, Siebert said.
There wasn’t any sign of it on Tuesday, but wardens were still patrolling the area, she added.
Siebert tries to take the presence of grizzlies matter-of-factly.
“It’s just part of the Wapiti School being a rural school. As the bears become more prevalent here, it’s part of life, having them around,” she said.
The Wapiti Elementary School is a two-room schoolhouse in grizzly county west of Cody. (Courtesy Elise Cole) 
A bear-resistant fence around the Wapiti Elementary School west of Cody keeps bears from climbing into the schoolyard. (Courtesy Elise Cole) 
A grizzly bear was drawn to a roadkill deer carcass right across Highway 14-16-20 from the Red Barn country store west of Cody. The store is about two miles away from the Wapiti Elementary School. (Courtesy Manda and Fred Siebert) 
A bear-resistant fence around the Wapiti Elementary School west of Cody keeps bears from climbing into the schoolyard. (Courtesy Elise Cole)
Wapiti Thick With Bears
Wapiti is a small community, along the North Fork between Cody and the edge of Shoshone National Forest, which in turn borders the eastern side of Yellowstone National Park.
U.S. Highway 14-16-20 runs between Cody and the park’s east gate. It sees brisk traffic, particularly during the height of tourist season.
And Yellowstone is the very heart of grizzly country.
Grizzlies once commanded a huge range – from the west coast to the Mississippi River, and south nearly to Mexico.
But they were steadily killed off and pushed back until only a scant few remained in or near Yellowstone.
The bears were placed under federal protection in 1975, so they’d have a chance to recover, and their numbers have grown ever since.
Grizzlies used to be rare sight in Wapiti and the rest of the North Fork. Now sightings have become common, as residents try to adapt to having huge bears as neighbors.
Community Bear Alert Network
There haven’t been any recent bear troubles at the Wapiti school, said Cole, who has worked there for six years.
In fact, she can’t recall a grizzly coming around the school during her tenure.
A few years ago, “there was black bear with a cub walking back and forth along the perimeter of the fence, but they didn’t cause any trouble,” she said.
Cole and her husband Micheal live with their son farther to the north, near the tiny community of Clark.
There are plenty of grizzlies there too, she said. He husband, who manages a ranch in that area, frequently encounters bears.
In Wapiti, the community stays vigilant, and neighbors watch each other’s backs.
“The community has been really great about letting us know when there’s bears close by,” Cole said.
She’s used to having wild and potentially dangerous critters near her workplace, as her previous teaching job was in a remote community in Alaska.
Even so, it can be spooky at times, Cole said – such as when she’s making solo trips out to the school’s garbage dumpsters (which are, of course, bear-resistant.)
“You’re thinking, ‘OK, I’m by myself right now. I hope there’s not a bear out here,” she said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
