A different kind of bear market #phenology

Last night, for the first time this year, the bird feeders were brought into the  house. They were rehung this morning. According to my instincts, we've reached the time of year when a neighborhood bear begins to wander in search of food. Past years have provided unfortunate examples of the hazard to bird feeders (inanimate, not human) of being one night too late anticipating a visit. An abundance of caution, as they say, minimizes the need to replace a trashed feeder that had been full of sunflower seeds. Then, this morning the Better Half mentioned that she thought she could smell bear when she walked her dog. Real, or power of suggestion?

early April, bear visit

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year a tipped over compost tumbler was the first sign the "midnight visitors" were about. Bird feeders were brought in the first night we noticed the tipped tumbler. Nevertheless, several days later, someone climbed up one of the deck posts, shredding the screen cloth in the process, to see if we had missed or forgotten anything. Our "ferocious guard dogs" never let out a peep all night. Sigh!

telltale sign

Photo by J. Harrington

Having bears in the neighborhood complicates some things we'd like to do on the property. I'm pretty sure I could rig up a coyote and fox proof chicken coop. The pictures and schematics I've seen for a bear-proof coop make Fort Knox look like child's play and I have more confidence in electric wires or netting keeping chickens in than bears out. Regardless, the bears we've had for neighbors have been less trouble and caused less aggravation than some human neighbors I've had over the years.

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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