It was a busy day for Joe and me. He worked
in the morning, played some golf. I busied myself around the house.
When he came home I gave him his birthday gifts. Yep, today was his 64th birthday.
Then we got dressed and left for his daughter Becky's home. She was having a birthday supper for Joe.
We had an enjoyable visit with Becky, husband Bill, Joe's grandaughter Kailee, and seven week old grandson Samuel. After eating delicious homemade chilli on rice, cornbread muffins, and birthday cake we headed home around 8PM.

It was 9 PM when we pulled into the carport. While Joe was getting leftovers out of the car, I went into the house, and left our white boxer Lilah out.
She charged up to greet Joe and started back towards the house, but made a quick turn and headed toward the mountain.
Joe came wrapping at the bedroom door and told me a bear was out in yard. He said that when Lilah went towards the mountain, he heard a loud grunt/snort noise.
Which he knew was not Lilah and
immediately headed for the house calling Lilah to come. She is an obedient dog and came right away.

Joe turned on other motion lights that were not on, and further into the mountain we saw a shadow moving around. Joe noticed one of our garbage cans laid by our bridge.
Then the shadow came in full view. A black bear climbed down a huge oak tree and stood near the garbage that was strewn all over the yard. There was one bird feeder hanging near the house so Joe, being brave went out and dumped the remaining seed on ground and brought the feeder in the house.

The bear just stood his ground, not moving a muscle, and watched with curiousity. It was not a big bear, guessing it weighed about 150-175 pounds, also guessing it was maybe 3 to 4 years old.
We noticed one of suet feeders was no longer hanging on a tree. So we will need to hunt for it in daylight.
I was curious if the bear got the two hanging feeders on bird house atop the ten foot pole.
I went to the picture window in living room and looked down into the lower yard.
There on the ground, laid the platform Joe had built around the pole, so squirrels could not get to the feeders. (Though two sneaky squirrels knew how to get up over. Lol! ) The bear did not or could not climb the pole apparently,
for the feeders were still hanging. And then I noticed another suet holder was missing.

Meanwhile, the bear moved around, standing up once, and that is when we noticed this bear had a small white patch on it's chest.
So we named this bear Patch. We realized this was a new bear in the neighborhood. It ventured down to the sunflower seed pile, layed down, and proceeded to eat.
It was a very very windy night, and when the wind blew so did the leaves, and the wind, the noises, and blowing leaves, would make the bear fidgety
and it would get up and walk a little ways, then stop when the wind stopped, return, lay down, and continue eating.

Finally it got up and was noseying around a small twelve foot high white dogwood tree, when quick as
lightning, it climbed up in the tree. approximately ten to fifteen
feet from the house, and reached for a hanging bird house. HUH?
What would a bear want with a bird house? What I did know is this little charade was making me mad.
Because I didn't want the bear to break the limbs off the tree or get the birdhouse, which we just bought this past summer.
That tree was a shaking and bending, and the bird house swinging on the limb. Well that did it, and I opened up the door,
and said "now you get out of there, while banging the lid on the storage bin (which we call a bear box, which is another story I wrote sometime ago about a bear opening the doors on it and getting inside).

I banged my hands on the lid and that dogwood tree was really shaking now, when the bear dropped down on his hind legs a hellin' and scurried into the mountain.
BUT it came back in about fifteen minutes, checked everything out, to made sure it didn't miss any seed on the ground. Finally it headed into the mountain. This excursion lasted a little over an hour. But this is not the end of the story.

Now you must remember, mountains at night are pitch black. Therefore it is also pitch black in our house. So black you cannot see your hands in front of your face.
Lights inside or outside, being turned on
will wake me in heartbeat. And when the motion lights came on the bedroom lit up.
I got up, looked at the time which was 2:55 AM, went into dining room, and yep there was Patch.

He pulled all the recycle cans out, walked around, checked out the garbage he had strewn around, laid down and ate the chicken and steak bones. Then finally he headed into the mountain, but he did not cross the bridge. Other bears we have watched didn't mind going over the bridge.
As for me, I went back to bed. Yawn!

The picture at the top of this page is of a very young bear, but when you look at him, with his long tongue sticking out, it reminded me of this bear who visited tonight. And telling us na na na na na na - I am a bear and will do as I please. LOL!

CLEAN UP DAY
October 16th

When I got up this morning Joe was already outside cleaning up the yard. He told me how a blackcap chickadee was mouthing off, because there were no feeders out yet.
So he got some feeders hung up and the chickadee immediately flew in and started eating. Plus he had lots of company.
We proceeded to check for any destruction. One smashed suet holder, one missing suet holder, and rest of the garbage cans strewn around. The most damage done was to the lattice work around our propane tank. No bear ever bothered this area.
And he also knocked down my petunia bushes, so Joe cut them back. Joe also cleaned up a couple of presents Patch left behind. So thoughtful of Patch. LOL!

I got busy cleaning out the hanging birdhouse. Birds do beautiful work building nests and this was no exception. It was packed with very fine twigs.
What was amazing to me was the bluejay feathers, and fluffy downy, the bird gathered to make a soft warm bed for it's nestlings.

All in all it was a busy night and morning. We do hope you enjoyed this true story of our life, living with black bears.

Written by ©Barbara L Carter/bluejay12
October 16th. 2010
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