Bear

 

The blueberries are ripe so I expect we'll see signs of our old friend, Bear, soon - that is, if the birds leave enough berries for us and Bear to share. The birds have been exceptionally busy in the garden, and I wish they'd pay more attention to slugs and bugs than to cherries and berries, but they don't pay me much mind when I'm shouting this at them.

Bear first arrived many years ago; one morning we glanced out the window towards the garden, and there she was - young, but huge, and in the compost. "Bear in the compost!" someone shouted, and we all crowded to the windows to look. As she sensed our interest and lumbered off toward the woods, out of my doors burst all the male creatures currently in residence: the Husband, the Cellar Dweller, and the visiting friends, leaving me to restrain the First Hound from exiting through one of the windows after them.

The four dudes rushed to the compost, raced around it, then took off through the garden in several directions towards the woods, looking exactly like a pack of dogs hot on the scent of something wonderful. Once they reached the woodline they thought better of it and came back to the house, panting with excitement. 

Ever since that first sighting, the people in my tribe have had an unusual number of bears in their lives.

Brother kept bees until a bear discovered the hives and began indulging – which destroys the hives, since bears don't have opposable thumbs enabling them to delicately remove the honey. After a few rounds, Brother put an electric fence around his hives to discourage bear brunching. That just pissed the bear off, so it started patrolling Brother's yard, looking for an opportunity to discuss the matter and reach a reasonable compromise. For several weeks Brother escorted his family to and from their cars with a shotgun slung across his back. Eventually the bear gave up, because Brother removed the hives.  

I've often seen a bear on the periphery of Brother's place, and one day I was gazing out his big front window towards the little brook that runs under the trees. There's a very large rock on the edge of the brook, and I was lazily contemplating how nice it might be to lie on the flat top of that moss-covered rock, in the sun-dappled shade, the little brook bubbling just below, and read a book or take a summer nap, when I realized that someone who'd been lying out on the rock had just stood up to full height and was staring back at me. 

"That's just not right," I thought, peering intensely at the spot. "Who on earth---" and then the bear had had enough of our silent conversation, set down onto four paws, and ambled out of sight. I'm full of wonder that my gaze from behind a closed window across a driveway and through a patch of trees could alert the bear that something other was focusing attention in its direction. 

For years the Tall Dude slept on a screened porch on the end of his barn-like structure. In winter the screens were replaced with plastic, and with down-filled comforters, a sub-zero sleeping bag, and a snug wooly hat, it was also his winter bedroom. The clothesline that stretched from porch wall to tall tree became a bird-feeder line, and the birdseed slept at the foot of his bed in a metal can. This airy bedroom was almost like being in a tree-house; that end of the porch floor was on stilts about 12 feet off the ground. 

One late winter when he was away he asked me to stop by to fill his feeders. My coming and going was the only activity out there, and one day the feeders were gone when I arrived to fill them. How the heck did something get those high feeders down? No idea. When the Tall Dude returned home, he walked down the still-snowy incline to explore the situation, and was alarmed to find bear claw marks on the wall of his porch, not far below the plastic-covered windows, and bear hind-foot prints still visible in the rotting snow at the foot of the wall. He started to calculate how tall this bear actually was, standing on hind feet and trying to reach the seed bins, then decided he didn't need to know and that the bins would be just as convenient stored in the well-enclosed center of the building.

One summer the Husband and the First Hound were taking a stroll 'round the dirt road that winds through out-back neighbor Eddie B.'s place and on up the hill to Elkins, when they accidentally stepped between Bear, who had crossed the road ahead of them, and her cubs, who were still in the bushes on the other side. Neither Husband nor the fairly aged Hound had any idea what they'd done, until Husband heard something pounding on the road behind them and looked back to discover Bear running after them. He started running and urging First Hound to run, too, but Hound really wanted to stop and greet the great big dog who his failing eyesight had detected was following them. A lot of shouting ensued, as Husband and Hound ran to Eddie B's barn to take shelter and discovered Bear had stopped chasing them. That close encounter with Bear was entirely too close.

Late one dark night in an early spring, I noticed the cat people slinking around the house very fluffed up, headed for the dining room window. The barkie boys were sound asleep, snoring away, so I crept behind the cats and peered out the window with them, onto the deck. It was unusually dark, but the cats were intently watching something I couldn't see. Suddenly, I realized the darkness was moving! 

I reached over and flipped on the porch light; and still all I could see was moving darkness; but in a moment, the darkness moved again, and four feet in front of me appeared a face. Bear had emerged early from hibernation, and was having a snack off the deck railings, where I feed the winter birds.

We looked at each other for a bit; me thinking, "Whoa, there's only a pane of glass between me and that large being, and I hope she doesn't smell the cat food on the kitchen counter behind me." At the same time, Bear was thinking --- actually, I don't know what.  Probably something about turning that darned porch light off.  We stared for a moment, she turned and lumbered down the stairs, then stood on hind feet and continued her snack.

I flipped the porch light off and locked the door, and the cats and I quietly, quietly, quietly snuck back through the house and upstairs to bed. I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs, just because.

That winter I'd kept the birdseed in a big plastic bin outside the kitchen door on the deck. It had a tight-fitting cover, and inside was a mug from NHPR, which I used to scoop seed. In the morning, the bin was gone. We found the bin cover, half-way across the field. We found the empty bin in the woods, on the far side of our swampy brook. But we never found the mug, though we hunted all over the area.

I'm pretty sure Bear took it home to hold her morning coffee.

Originally published in shorter form, in the Concord Monitor, August 18, 2016, as "The Bear Chronicles."