We're a watering hole?

[Ninurta]

 Yeah, I'd be pretty shocked to see a bear.

There's a chance some night we'll see a coyote.   We know they're here.

My wife used to go out and walk a mile every morning. One morning she was walking as usual, heard a noise, and two bears came out of the bushes into the road behind her. She stared at them, they stared at her, but she knew she had to get past them to get back home. So, she skirted them on the far side of the road from them, and just walked past until she got home. The bears must have been as shocked as she was - she said they never moved, just watched her walk past.

I was leaving my sister's house one day and walking home, and saw "her" bear at the end of her driveway. All I saw was it's ass end disappearing into the brush, getting the hell away from me. I used to smell them on the hill above my house in the brush, but I never bothered them, and they never bothered me, so we peacefully coexisted. I only had them get into my trash once, which I considered a lesson learned and thereafter just waited until trash day morning to set it out.

We had 3 bears on that mountain, and we called them "momma bear, papa bear, and baby bear". Baby bear wasn't really a baby, she was about half grown and growing. Poppa bear was a monster. He came to visit my brother in law one evening when he was sitting on the porch. When he started yelling for my sister to get his rifle and bring it, poppa bear skyed away, scared off. Poppa bear probably went about 5 or 600 pounds. Momma bear probably ran 250 to 300.

baby bear made the rounds, and used to regularly raid the trash cans at the place I worked on top of the mountain. I've got a video of her somewhere getting out of the dumpster and getting scarce when folks started coming in for work one Sunday morning. It was always Saturday night or early Sunday morning when she made her raids up there. One of the maintenance guys saw her up on top of a picnic table we had out back one Saturday night/ Sunday morning about 2 am when he stepped out to smoke. He said she was just laying there, lounging around on the top of the picnic table.

The ones that passed the corner of my yard here on their way to the woods were seen by 3 of the guys who helped me move as they were leaving to go home. They yelled up to the house to let us know that bears were coming our way, but the yelling scared the bejesus out of the bears, and they took off at a dead run into the woods. I could track their progress by the crows they upset on their way up the mountain.

Now, one of the guys who worked for me on top of the mountain at my old place, that was a REAL man! He was sending his kids off to the bus stop one day, and saw a bear up in the bed of his truck. He had, just the day before, put a brand new bed liner in the truck, and the bear was scratching it up. that pissed him off something fierce, and he just snapped off a 5 foot switch and ran up to the bear ans started switching it, whereupon the bear decided that was as good a time as any to get the hell out of there, since there were obviously crazy folk about. he chase along behind it still switching the bear, and switched it all the way off his property. His kids, watching all this, were laughing their asses off.

I reckon you just have to learn how to handle the critters around you...

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