Thursday, October 8, 2009

Close Encounters of the Bear Kind!

Wildlife around here has been busy. We have been having trouble recently with bush rats. They are sort of cute, but very destructive. Eating my vegetable garden, sunflowers, the cat's food...lot's of trouble. So when I heard sounds coming from the back porch the other night, I figured it was another bush rat trying to get to the cat's food. I stepped out onto the screened in porch and saw the cat food container was gone. Figured the rat dumped it over, but no where to be found. There was a scratching at the back screen door so I stuck my face next to the screen to see if I could see the rat all the while giving it a good talking to and telling it to get out of there.
Slowly, I realized that I was face to face with a bear! We were literally 2 to 3 inches apart with only the door screen between us! Never been that close to a bear.
In fact we haven't had any bear visits since the first couple of seasons we moved here. Once we brought our dogs over, that was the end of bears, deer, cougars, etc. coming close to the house.We are now realizing how good a job our dogs did keeping the critters away! So time to look for another dog in earnest.
In defense of the bear, I had some bags of garbage to burn stacked outside the porch. So he was only looking for food and it was my fault that I had them out there. Was planning on burning them the next day. Which I did. Normally I am very careful with garbage and my compost. Lesson learned!