An Ordinary Day

Well, after all the excitement of last night's bear visit, today has been rather pedestrian.

I've put out the feeders, done a load of laundry, started doing the dishes.  I haven't yet, but still need to, scoop the cat litter, have a shower and yes, bring in the feeders.

And now that things have calmed down a bit, perhaps I should finish the story from last night.

When I left you last night, I had bravely (snicker) frightened off the bear.  It took off towards the back of the house and I went to let the cat in.  Still vibrating with excitement, I remember the woodshed which is attached to the back of the house, accessible through the east porch.  Sometimes, I keep garbage in there if it builds up before garbage day.  Could the bear have gone in there?  Out to the east porch but then how do I check without putting myself in danger?

So what do I do?  I knock on the door and listen for noise.  No noise.  Turn on the light and open the door a crack.  Nothing.  Check the door to the outside and the hook is latched - phew.  The bear could not have got in.  Back inside, I looked out the kitchen window, pondering this encounter.  And what do I see but the bear....in the neighbour's garden.

Quickly I check my phone for their number.....not there.  I check my phone book.....still no phone number.  Realizing that I don't actually have their number because I normally just walk over if I have to talk with them, I call the uncle to get the phone number.  Letting them know about the bear, I watch as the bear takes off further north.  Seeing that the neighbours are outside, I feel secure enough to go out to join them.

And we stand by the garden looking at the bear tracks in the dirt.  Pretty big tracks.  I say the bear was at least three feet tall.  Big bear, he says.  We laugh about not having each other's phone numbers and discuss what to do about the bear.  Cattle, cows with calves, graze in the fields to the north.  Will that be just too tempting for the bear?

This morning, I went out and took these photos of the tracks from the garden.

I hope you can see these photos okay.  The top one is the back foot; the bottom is the front foot.  The front of each foot is to the left of the photo.  The key at the bottom is there for comparison as I couldn't find a ruler; it is two inches long making the back foot at least 7 inches long and the front foot almost 4 inches long.  I don't know if that is big or not but it's big enough for me.

Before I went to bed last night, I set aside some time to shine the flashlight out the window to see if the bear had returned.  It hadn't.

I hope it does come back again at some point as I would like to be braver.



By the way, I have discovered that I had the comment process closed so that only those who are registered could post a comment.  For those of you who have wanted to make comments but didn't feel comfortable providing personal information during the registration process, I have now set things up so that anyone can comment.  Give it a whirl if you'd like.