It's bearly Spring!

This is a tough time of year for many creatures. New growth is just starting. Last year's fruits and nuts are few, far between and well past ripe. Deer browse on twigs. According to Audubon Guides:

"Spring is very challenging for bears. When they emerge from their dens in April, they may have lost up to twenty percent or more of their weight over the winter. They are ravenous at a time when there is very little vegetation, the mainstay of their diet. Wetland plants such as swamp thistle are a primary source of food in early spring. Other foods include the tender, unfurling leaves of deciduous trees, catkins (pendant flowers) from early-blooming trees like aspen and willow, grasses, insect larvae and snowfleas."

Yesterday, at dusk, a little before full dark, we were curled up with a book, and the dogs were lying quietly digesting a recent snack. Suddenly, Franco, the Better Half's border collie cross, a dog known to be hyperactive much of the time, and hypersensitive to intrusions on "his" territory, went nuts. We bellowed at him and walked over to the family room / office walkout door, arriving just in time to see a black, role-poly furry rump rumbling down one slope and up another into the woods on the North side of the house. One of the neighborhood black bears had come looking to see what might be available in the local sunflower seed supply. We had already taken in the feeders for the day, but some spillage from the Winter months still hasn't been cleaned up.

late Spring (early June) midday raid

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law stopped by earlier. They reported as they returned from a perimeter walk, that they saw a pile of bear droppings along the edge of the woods. No comment on what the bear had been feeding on. It's annoying, but worth the effort, to bring in feeders each evening and put them back out in the morning. Unfortunately, several years ago, that wasn't enough. One June, about mid-day, a local bruin decided that s/he couldn't get by without sunflower seeds for a snack and, in broad daylight, bent the hanger, trashed the feeder, and licked up the seeds. We went and spoke harshly to the intruder at the time. S/he grudgingly sauntered off in search of something else to nosh on. After we post today's blog, we'll go and park the trash can in the garage for the Summer. It's once again the time of year when predawn dog walks are more exciting.

The Truro Bear

by Mary Oliver

There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaver,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?

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