: Journal Entry: Sometimes You Get the Bear...
It was an otherwise quiet evening. Our daughter is off to camp and my wife and I had battened down the hatches, so to speak because of a threatened thunderstorm--it didn't materialize, but something had our dog Sheba almost literally climbing the walls downstairs.
She has this thing about cats, chipmunks, ravens, squirrels, movement of any kind. Must be the Shepherd in her (damn), because the Lab part of her is usually pretty quiescent. Her bark was over the edge hysterical and I could hear even from upstairs her frantic clawing at the glass patio door. When I went down to see, her whole body was aimed like an arrowhead toward the poplar-thick ridge of rock behind our townhouse.
A bear. Youngish, black rounded body with big almost mule-like ears and a tan snout that ended in a black aureole of a nose. Maybe 50 metres away. It stopped, looked round, as if confused, then back at Sheba, who was keeping up her tirade. Just possibly, she persuaded the bear that things were a bit hot around here and better vamoose. Which bear-face did, a couple of minutes later. Then again, there wasn't any obvious food around (our garbage is in a cinder-block hut) and the berries aren't anywhere near ripe.
There are black bears here, and the occasional moose, white-tail deer and red foxes. But this is the first real-live bear sighting in the five years we've lived here, and it was a treat.
There is a place I call a sacred spot maybe 200 metres into ther poplar and spruce forest behind our house--a little bald spot like an avenue. Some people have been making fires and drinking beer and leaving garbage around near it, and I hope that neither they nor bear-face meet one another. I 'll hold off going into the woods for a while (the bugs are bad now, anyway), but when the cold hits in November, it'll be time to go in and clear away the summer's garbage and pay my respects.
It was an otherwise quiet evening. Our daughter is off to camp and my wife and I had battened down the hatches, so to speak because of a threatened thunderstorm--it didn't materialize, but something had our dog Sheba almost literally climbing the walls downstairs.
She has this thing about cats, chipmunks, ravens, squirrels, movement of any kind. Must be the Shepherd in her (damn), because the Lab part of her is usually pretty quiescent. Her bark was over the edge hysterical and I could hear even from upstairs her frantic clawing at the glass patio door. When I went down to see, her whole body was aimed like an arrowhead toward the poplar-thick ridge of rock behind our townhouse.
A bear. Youngish, black rounded body with big almost mule-like ears and a tan snout that ended in a black aureole of a nose. Maybe 50 metres away. It stopped, looked round, as if confused, then back at Sheba, who was keeping up her tirade. Just possibly, she persuaded the bear that things were a bit hot around here and better vamoose. Which bear-face did, a couple of minutes later. Then again, there wasn't any obvious food around (our garbage is in a cinder-block hut) and the berries aren't anywhere near ripe.
There are black bears here, and the occasional moose, white-tail deer and red foxes. But this is the first real-live bear sighting in the five years we've lived here, and it was a treat.
There is a place I call a sacred spot maybe 200 metres into ther poplar and spruce forest behind our house--a little bald spot like an avenue. Some people have been making fires and drinking beer and leaving garbage around near it, and I hope that neither they nor bear-face meet one another. I 'll hold off going into the woods for a while (the bugs are bad now, anyway), but when the cold hits in November, it'll be time to go in and clear away the summer's garbage and pay my respects.
Current Mood: contemplative