MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — The two break-in artists were caught in the act. Steve Searles had them cornered right outside the crime scene, high in the branches of a towering pine.

“Bad bears!” he growled up at the 100-pound cubs, which peered back innocently. “What are you guys doing? Who do you think you are?”

The yearlings had followed their mother through an open back window into an unattended condominium, where they had ransacked the kitchen and living room, scattering packages of flour, pasta and crackers. They had jumped on the bed, mangled some wooden blinds and left a smelly calling card on the carpet. Then Mom took off, leaving the cubs on their own.

A witness called the police. They called Searles — known here as the man who talks to bears.

Bearded and lanky, his graying ponytail tucked under an ever-present baseball cap, the eccentric former hunter and high school dropout contemplated his next move.

Before Searles began his work with the three dozen resident bears in this eastern Sierra tourist town, the cubs would have been trapped or shot with a tranquilizer gun — or maybe just shot, period.

Searles uses different tools: firecrackers and flares, rubber bullets, air horns — all nonlethal techniques he refers to as “bear spankings.” It’s his version of ursine tough love.

“Steve gets along fine with the bears,” said George Shirk, editor of the local Mammoth Monthly. “It’s people he sometimes has a problem with.”

Since he became the police department’s volunteer wildlife specialist in 1996, Searles has developed a national reputation as a bear whisperer, someone who can deal with problem bears without killing them.

He tries to think like a bear. He studies their habits and social hierarchy. He has participated in American Indian ceremonies to learn what the tribes perceive as bears’ spiritual nature. He even has been known to spread his own urine to drive away territorial animals.

“I’m the biggest, baddest, meanest bear in this town — that’s what I want them to think,” said the 48-year-old. “I’m the alpha male, and they must obey me.”

California Department of Fish and Game officials are dubious. Searles’ methods, they say, do not alter behavior but merely encourage animals to move to other locations.

Wardens and biologists insist that bears that habitually raid homes for food or shelter — especially those that threaten humans — cross a well-demarcated line and must be killed.

Each year about 100 problem black bears are killed in California, most of them by game wardens, law enforcement officers and property owners carrying a special permit. No permits have been issued in Mammoth Lakes since 2000, and usually about one bear a year is killed as a public safety hazard, officials say.

Though the animals have been known to attack humans, no one has been killed by a black bear in California, Searles said. He insists that his message to residents about co-existence is one reason no one has applied for a special permit in recent years.

“People are getting the message,” he said. “They used to ask for permits to take down problem bears, because it was the only answer: You could either put up with them or kill them. There was no middle ground before.”

With only a ninth-grade education, he has shared his methods at scientific conferences and trained law enforcement in New Jersey, Minnesota and Canada. He has counseled rangers in Yosemite National Park. “Here are these people with their advanced degrees watching this high school dropout draw national attention,” Shirk said. “Steve’s a rebel. He does things his own way.”

Searles and his bosses don’t always see eye to eye. This spring, he was fired by Mammoth police who said he was not notifying dispatchers of his whereabouts. Searles insists the termination was political.

In September, the police department returned Searles to his job after residents spoke out at an emotional Town Council meeting. Many in the standing-room-only crowd said the bear problem had worsened in his absence. They wanted him back, and right away.

“Steve’s not a guy who likes to be called a hero, but that’s what he is,” resident Dave Tidwell said to applause. “He’s a nationally recognized bear specialist, right here in our town. And we want him back.”

Such adulation surprises Searles. “I’m just a dopey guy who was the least likely to succeed in school,” he said. “But these bears are important to this town. And to me.”

Searles arrived in Mammoth Lakes from Newport Beach in 1976. He survived on odd jobs. Then he became one of the area’s most successful hunters and trappers. “I was a good killer,” he said, adding: “Learning an animal and its habits, outwitting the smartest creature, was incredibly satisfying.”

In the early 1990s, then-Mammoth Lakes Police Chief Michael Donnelly asked Searles to help cull a coyote population. He killed 43 animals in six months, singling out the alpha male first.

The experience changed him, he said. Hunting began to repulse him.

In 1996, Donnelly asked him to turn his attention to nuisance black bears, who were traipsing through cabins and sauntering down Main Street. Searles said he needed time to study the animals’ habits.

From the safety of an elevated deck, he watched bears forage through restaurant trash bins and was awed by their agility and intelligence. He watched them ease themselves along narrow railings like 500-pound gymnasts. He saw a bear elegantly remove the top of a mayonnaise jar, another pick the lock of a secured trash bin.

His nighttime stakeouts taught him something else: Some restaurants purposely left trash receptacles open, advertising evenings of food and bear watching. Tourists also left out food to attract hungry bears.

“We had a people problem,” Searles said, “not a bear problem.”

Searles pitched Donnelly an education program for humans and animals alike. Lock down dumpsters. Fine restaurants for mishandling trash. Teach bears that human food is off-limits.

And that gentle touch was good news for the cubs Searles treed near the ransacked condo. He left them with a stern lecture. “No more of that, you naughty little bears.”

Then he turned and whispered, “Cute, aren’t they?”