North Carolina Bear Lady Killed By Bad Bears

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The Bear Lady is dead. Kay Grayson,67, who dedicated the last years of her life to caring for black bears on her remote property near Columbia, was found dead last Monday, likely dragged there by the animals she loved, authorities said.

Grayson may have been dead for more than two weeks, Tyrrell County Sheriff Darryl Liverman said Wednesday.

“Based on what we saw, it appeared a bear dragged her back into the woods,” Liverman said.

Police are not certain whether a bear killed her, he said.

For more than 20 years, Grayson was known for feeding bears and calling the Sheriff’s Office to complain about hunters. She lived alone in a mobile home on hundreds of acres along U.S. 64, east of Columbia.

Former Virginian-Pilot photographer Drew Wilson remembers that he first contacted Grayson by leaving a note on a gate post at the entry to the property she had named Bearsong. She had no phone, electricity or running water, Wilson said.

She would call for the bears, ready to feed them peanuts or dog food.

Authorities received a call Jan. 19 asking them to check on Grayson after she had not been seen for a couple of weeks, Liverman said. Bloodhounds helped locate her remains in the woods about 200 yards from her home.

Wilson recalls trying to photograph Grayson for a story published in The Pilot in 1997. She placed a chair outside her mobile home and asked Wilson to sit down. She grabbed his expensive camera and handed it to the bear she had named 64 after the highway next to her property. The bear pawed the camera before tossing it to the ground. Grayson retrieved it and gave it back to the photographer.

“At that point, I could start taking pictures,” Wilson said.

Young bears once crawled into Grayson’s trailer through the window and left muddy paw prints in the rooms, Wilson said. She did not clean up the mess.

“It was like a reminder of them being there,” Wilson said.

Grayson had inherited the property from a wealthy man who often traveled with her on a yacht up and down the Intracoastal Waterway, Wilson said. Earlier in her life, she had been a professional dancer.

Sheriff’s deputies found among her belongings a photo of her in the 1980s after she had won a sailing race in Bermuda, Liverman said. But in her last years, bears were her passion.

“She was a character,” he said.

Many thanks to PilotOnline.com.