Life in the Country is Never Boring!!!

This afternoon CD was working up the garden area and planting a couple of plants that arrived today from a nursery Like the true romantic that he is, he had thrown pebbles at my window to get me to look out and approve the placement for one of the plants. So when I hear a bit of clanging outside, I though he wanted me to help with placing another plant. I headed over to the window to tell him how very romantic I thought it was for him to keep throwing pebbles at my window…. At the same moment I heard his boots thundering up the stairs.

As I turned from the window to see what he wanted – he panted – “get the camera --- bears!!!”

Back to the window… sure enough, directly below was a good-sized black bear. While I was trying to get him into my viewer, I noticed movement over to my right… another bear working his way around the hill…. I began turning on outside lights hoping to send out enough light to get a better photograph…Suddenly, I realized there was a third bear on the other side of the house. CD says that might be the one he met face-to-face as he was coming in from the garden.
Just at dusk he had heard rustling in the woods back of the garden and thought probably some deer were stirring around, waiting to browse our yard after dark. Then when he saw a bear walking across the yard on the far side of our house he decided it was probably time to go inside. As he rounded the corner at the base of the stairs he surprised bear number three browsing around under our deck. Mr. Bear made a quick exit and CD dashed up the stairs.

Now I do think bears are interesting creatures. I even enjoy watching them. But three bears in my yard at one time --- THAT IS A BIT MUCH!!!

For the next two hours we watched the bears lick up seeds spilled from bird feeders. Tear up the only feeder we had left low enough for them to reach; scour the grass for the cracked corn left by the turkeys who have been recent morning visitors and basically check out everything from our plantings to our storage unit and car.
When one of the bears seemed to be about to climb up onto the car, my brain suddenly seemed to click into gear and I remembered we had a remote control on the key chain that would sound the horn. I grabbed the key and set off the horn. To my delight that spooked the bears. It eventually sent one of the bears up into a tree – not my best plan since what I want is for the bears to finish checking out our yard and go on their way.

We have had bear visitors every spring and fall since we moved here. Usually only one at a time – on a couple of occasions there have been two bears. They have managed to tear up several hundreds of dollars worth of bird feeders and poles and even damaged a trailer that a friend has parked here in the yard. Year by year we have changed our bird feeding habits, planted native plant bird foods – but the bears love the blueberries in the fall, hung feeders out of reach on the sides of the house and put up a tall steel pipe for a feeder pole, in attempts to bear-proof the property. Never before have the bears been quite so determined as they are this evening. Never before have I felt that there was so little to attract the bears. These bears - although they seem quite big – are very thin and must be having a difficult time finding the food they need. More houses were built in the neighborhood last summer so there are less and less places for them to forage.

State rangers just shrug and say, “The bears were here first.” But if they would think it through they know that is not really so. All of the woods around here are divided up by stone fences – Fences obviously built by farmers who would have quickly made steak out of any bear who did not understand whose land the farm really was. These bears may have some distant ancestor who shared this land with Indian neighbors but this generation are newbies, just like we are.