The bear in the garbage

(I wrote about the bear a couple months ago here.  Since then it’s been back several times.)

So, the bear came back again last night. About 9:30 I was out back feeding the dogs and they seemed a bit restless and then started barking. I looked up and over by the trash cans and saw one turned over and a snout with 2 shiny eyes peering back at me. I put the dog food away and went back inside. (There was a fence between us and not that that would stop the bear, it would at least slow it down) It didn’t follow me, but went back to it’s garbage snacking.

I went upstairs, grabbed my big flashlight, got my wife and then out onto the deck which is directly over where we keep our garbage and quickly spotted her (I say her because there had been cubs previously and I’m assuming it’s the same bear).  There she was.  A fairly large black bear, enjoying the tasty treats of the week’s kitchen cast-offs.

When she spotted us and noticed the light on her, she turned and started plodding up the driveway.  I picked up a couple rocks that I keep on the deck (mostly to scare away the coyotes and foxes that our neighbor wrongly feeds, but that’s another story) and chose a hefty one and aimed near her huge, slowly departing rump.  I missed of course, because I don’t ever aim to hit the wildlife; just land one nearby, but I do want them to know that they shouldn’t hang around here and that they should, in fact, be afraid of us – and they clearly aren’t.  But with two small kids in the house, we need to at least try to change this.

But, she got even with us as when we woke up in the morning, we discovered she had been back in the middle of the night and spread more garbage around and further up the driveway.

I really hope she doesn’t become a nuisance bear and have to be relocated, or worse, put down.

Please don’t feed the wildlife!

It’s time for the bears to start coming back into Evergreen.  Unfortunately, this mama bear is getting pretty big.  A couple mornings after I took this photo off of our deck, she was back with her babies in the morning. Fortunately, our deck doesn’t have stairs to the ground, so it’s not easy for any wildlife to climb up.  She didn’t like the flash, and took off running right after I shot this.  Of course, I’m always trying to scare them off, but our neighbor feeds the wildlife and I can’t imagine that isn’t helping to bring in the wildlife.  More on that in another post…

So I’m not one to usually take pictures of deer here in Evergreen as they are just like the squirrels in Virginia-they’re everywhere and I rarely photographed them when I lived there too.
But here are a couple that wandered under our carport today. Maybe to get out of the rain. But, I thought it interesting enough to snap a couple shots as you don’t ever get this close to them.

Did anyone see the cows at Buchanan park Saturday? Did anyone get any pictures? It was very strange to drive into the Rec center and see two black cows lounging on the field… Post a reply if you have pics of them!