Birds, rabbits, squirrels and wild critters galore, the staff of the Carbon County Environmental Education Center sees them all.

But a recent visit from bears caught them off guard.

Hungry bruins raided the center’s dumpster, leaving muddy paw prints — and a messy trail of garbage, said Franklin Klock, center naturalist.

“It was our bad,” Klock admitted.

Klock explained that he and staff of the 151 E. White Bear Dr., Summit Hill center missed the spring window to secure the receptacle from the four-legged dumpster divers.

“We know the bears are out. We knew the young were traipsing about but we didn’t spray our dumpster — and we deserved it,” Klock said of the after-dark raid.

And with that lesson learned, he shared ways for others to keep bears — who are emerging from hibernation — from their trash.

According to Klock, the bears hit the center’s dumpster on April 5.

“It had to be two — but it could have been more,” Klock said.

He’s aware of two bear “families” in the area, including a trio of little ones and a mother, and a mother and a set of two young. The latter, he said, have been spotted between Broadway in Jim Thorpe and Owl Creek.

Klock believes that the mother bear climbed into the dumpster, then handed vittles to her young cubs. The family then took their haul into the woods, where they rooted through it before enjoying a picnic.

“At our place, everything is enticing,” Klock said of the trash contents.

The center feeds its injured wildlife residents and visitors diets that mimic natural food sources — things that birds of prey might hunt in the wild, for example. Remnants of the uncooked meals are then tossed into the trash.

“Bears are naturally attracted to dead animals,” Klock explained. “It’s not uncommon to see a bear eating a dead deer alongside a road. That’s a regular thing for them.”

But they also have a hankering for household trash.

“They like anything that smells meaty or savory, anything that smells sweet,” he said. “They crave protein as well, so they are looking for anything that smells like old pork chop bones or things like that.”

Klock noted that they’ll also fish out baby diapers and feminine products.

“Bears have an incredible sense of smell. Experts gauge between hundreds or even thousands of times better than ours,” Klock said. “They find food very, very easily.”

To stop bears from sniffing out trash, keep garbage cans indoors if possible. In addition, he said, don’t put trash cans out for collection the night before if a trash hauler doesn’t typically arrive until morning.

“If your trash is getting wiped out every morning or every night and you don’t go to work until 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, put your trash out when you go to work,” he said.

Keeping trash secured not only deters bears, but prevents animals like cats, skunks, rats and birds from getting a free feast.

Another tip, he said, is to spray straight ammonia onto and into trash cans.

“It doesn’t necessarily mask the scent of garbage,” Klock said. But when inhaled, ammonia fumes can overwhelm bears’ sensitive noses. The scent will curtail their desire to dig through garbage.

“Ammonia is natural. It’s a naturally-occurring chemical,” he said.

Above all, Klock said to never, ever feed bears.

“It’s really, really bad,” he said. “The (Pennsylvania) game commission has a phrase: a fed bear is a dead bear.”

Making food available to bears means their young will never learn how to find the right foods they need.

“They become a problem on the day they are born. And it’s not their fault,” he said of bears that become dependent on humans for food.

Bears that are fed can become nuisance bears, lose their fear of humans, and continue to forage for garbage.

Feeding bears is illegal, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Years ago, Klock recalled hearing about an area family that would leave a slice of jelly bread on a stump for a bear each day. They’d watch the bear eat from their porch.

When the family left for vacation, Klock said, the bear continued to visit the home to look for the jelly bread. Not finding any, it busted into the family’s home, tore through the kitchen and destroyed the refrigerator.

“Was that the bear’s fault?” Klock asked. “Absolutely not.”