Burned bear cub, Li’l Smokey, inspires new children’s book

“ ‘CRACK ... RRRRUMBLE!’ Lightning struck the forest.”

That’s the beginning of the children’s book “Saving Li’l Smokey” — a true tale about a local man and the black bear he rescued from the smoldering aftermath of a lightning-ignited fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Cal Fire forester and Bret Harte High School graduate Adam Deem found the 8-pound cub — with paw pads burned through, eyes singed and wailing in agony — near the end of last July’s Moon Fire.

Deem and his wife, Celeste, who now live in the Redding area, penned the book about the rescue and happily-ever-after ending.
   

“The night he came home from the whole ordeal, he wrote everything in report format for Cal Fire,” said Celeste Deem, who used to teach first grade and now is a children’s mental health therapist. “I read it and thought that would make a great children’s story.”

And that was before the happy ending.

When Deem first stumbled upon the 4- to 6-month-old bear among the scorched forest, he waited to see if the cub’s cries attracted a mother, but no mother came. He watched the baby bear struggle to climb a tree for reprieve from the smoldering forest floor, but his paws were too charred to climb.

So Deem played hero for the suffering cub and scooped the furball up.

“He was all claws and teeth,” Deem said at the time.

But about an hour later, the cub calmed as he nestled into Deem’s arms like a baby.

The cub’s prognosis was bleak. It was not known if he would survive his injuries, and, if he did, he probably would become too domesticated to be released back into the wild.

But Li’l Smokey stayed wild during seven months recuperating at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care facility and was released back into the wild in February to hibernate through the winter.

By all guesses, Li’l Smokey has woken from his long nap to enjoy the forest once again.

“We’re so pleased with how everything turned out,” Adam Deem said. “It has met and exceeded all of our expectations.”

“Probably the best part of the whole process was that we were able to keep the project entirely local,” Celeste Deem said. “It’s a local story, with local authors and a local illustrator.”

That illustrator, Ryan Lamb, is a 15-year-old freshman at a Redding-area high school.

Celeste Deem said a mutual friend spotted Lamb drawing during church services and recommended he illustrate the book.

“She did say he was also listening,” Celeste Deem said.

“The story is almost surreal,” she added. “It made for a really great story.”  

“Saving Li’l Smokey,” can be viewed and purchased at www.lilsmokey.net.