Bear with me!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Last night, when I was walking back to the house with the dogs, I saw an odd shadow in the beam of my flashlight. It looked like the shadow of the neighbor’s van against the wall of their house, but as I studied it more, I realized that it wasn’t a shadow - it was a big bear! The bear was only 20’ away from my front door, so I decided that trying to go inside with the dogs was probably a bad idea, so I went across the street and rang the neighbor’s doorbell. They came to the door, and I pointed across to my house and showed them the bear, who had now walked over to investigate my garbage can. The cans up here have latches to keep the bears out, and he eventually moved on to a house down the street, and started trying to get into their garbage can. When he had left the scene, I went home.
After I went to bed, maybe an hour later, I heard a “thump,” and when I got up, I saw that he had come back and knocked over my garbage can.

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It looked like a Black Bear. Pretty big - I’d guess 400+ lbs.

2

They have gotten into our cars a number of times. It’s recommended to not lock the cars, cause they will just rip the handle off. Oddly, no damage has been done in the cars that a wet rag won’t take care of.

@beowulff check around the door handles on your car. You may find some scratches.

When we walk our dogs, we carry bear spray. Black bears, while not shy, may not be that big of a danger. Cougars are. Coyotes too. My Wife got surrounded by 4 of them.

I’ve had my shed door ripped off twice. I’ve reinforced it. So far so good.

When you go outside, and see your car door open, be cautious.

3

Wow! Where do you live?

4

We are renovating an old house to use as a summer place in Durango, CO. The house is in town, but very close to the river and some mountains. The neighbor across the street said that if you started waking towards the mountain across the street, you could basically go all the way to California without hitting any significant civilization.

Most of the neighbors were pretty blasé about the bear, but it was very startling to walk up to the house and see that huge body in the darkness.

5

Will he come around during daylight hours? At least now you know about him/her.

There was that fatal attack by a black bear on an elderly woman inside her house in Downieville Calif last November. That bear was a daily nuisance visitor in remote neighborhood

6

The general consensus is that the bears are strictly nighttime (or twilight) visitors). The neighbor across the street, who has lived here many years, thinks that they have somehow figured out the garbage collection schedule, and come down to raid the garbage cans on trash day. If so, that’s pretty smart (smarter than average). As if bears weren’t enough, my nextdoor neighbor said that a friend of hers across the river (maybe 1/2 mile away) caught a Mountain Lion on her Ring camera last week…

7

Funny, as in odd.

We’ve had a bear creeping around here for a couple years.
We thought he had moved on.
But we’ve just recently seen him again.
He obviously the same ‘black’ bear, but he’s a odd color.

He’s grown.

He never has come close to the house. We don’t have trash cans. What we don’t recycle or haul off ourselves is burnt. Daily.

Careful out there!

8

I’ve got my dogs trained to wait when I open the door to take them for a walk. Just so I can have a quick look around. Mostly we get moose. They are not to be toyed with either. They are friendly enough and don’t pay much attention to us. I always make sure I have an out though. They graze on the ‘grass’ in our ‘yard’.

Only saw one during mid day as I recall. It would not leave. Just sat there watching the house. Banging pots and pans etc. would not scare him off. It was creepy. A 30-30 shot into a tree stump near them did the trick.

9

Only saw one bear during the day. I wouldn’t try to scare moose off.

10

I’m more afraid of mountain lions. They’re stealthy. They’ll stalk you and attack you from behind.

11

Mountain lion attacks are very rare though. There have been only 28 fatal mountain lion attacks in the past 100 years in North America, and only 9 on adults.

12

Bear are the largest predator here. No Mountain lions or Moose.
Bobcats are here. But I’ve never heard of an attack on a human. They’ll kill chickens and small pets.

Yep, only Bear. Unless you count Bigfoot😳…

I have to say our Bear has never threatened. Mostly seen as rump running for cover.

13

I can’t help but notice the hummingbird feeder next to your trashcan. Bears love them, you know.

You might consider replacing the feeder with natural hummingbird attractants such as hanging fuchsias. You’ll still get the hummingbirds – and maybe not the bear!

Good luck. An habituated bear is a dangerous bear. Be careful.

14

There’ve been several bear sightings in our metropolitan area - a major, fairly densely-populated suburb of Washington DC.

I have yet to see one - either here or on trips to mountainous areas out west (closest we ever came was what appeared to be a VERY fresh pile of bear scat, in Glacier National Park). They are somewhat common an hour or two west of here, in the Shenandoah Mountains for example, though we never saw one there either.

I think the largest common four-legged predator here would be coyotes.

15

There’s an area south of Anchorage called “Hillside”, which was built up on the side of the Chugach Range, mainly because of the views. It was also bear country, and still is. People are warned to not put their dogs outside on a leash and not to put up bird feeders unless they want unwelcome guests and fewer pets.

16

Smarter than the average bear?

17

They just want a pick-a-nick.
Hey, boo-boo?

18

I was once stalked by a moose. On Isle Royale National Park. It was spooky.

I went out to take pictures of the sunset from a lookout tower. With that complete, I got it into my head to stick around past sunset to see the stars. Clear sky, 360 degree view of the horizon, and in the middle of a damn big lake miles away from any source of light (and some leagues from the nearest town), I was sure it would be magnificent. And it probably would have been.

But of course I was a couple miles from camp as well. And after about… fifteen minutes of waiting in the fading light, sanity kicked in. I was like “You know… you’re going to have to walk two miles back in pitch black, down a rocky ridge line, then across narrow boards through a couple of swamps, and through a heavily forested area on a dirt path. Again, in pitch black. You realize how insane that is, right?”

I managed to make it through the most treacherous part of the hike back (through the swamps) before it turned to pitch black, but somewhere along that last mile… well, it was like I heard people talking. Not that I could make out the words, but it was like they were some distance away and muffled by the trees. I kept walking expecting to maybe pick out a word or two before long, but as I continued along and the “voices” seemed no less indistinct than they had at first, I started to consider how odd it was. I mean, here I was with my flashlight, a mile from the campsite, surrounded by forest, and though I could hear them, I could not pick up even a glimmer of light from them. Surely, thought I, they would have had flashlights? They couldn’t be stargazing: looking overhead, the leaves were too thick. They would admit no starlight.

So finally I called out, “Hey, who’s there?”

No one answered. But still there were those muffled voices…

And then I remembered when, a few days earlier, in broad daylight, I had just about come within arm’s reach of a moose without realizing it. The only hint I had of anyone or anything sharing the trail with me was a most unusual sound: like low voices muffled through the trees. That time, too, I had assumed there were just some other hikers around the next bend in the trail. But then a moose bolted out from behind the trees and plunged into the water alongside the trail.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I realized then that I was playing a most dangerous game: the hunting of a man. I was that man, being hunted. And the moose was my would-be predator.

I don’t believe I have ever been so afraid of anything as a grown man. Not in the Navy, not even in Iraq. It was… it was terror. I was so relieved to finally make camp. I honestly don’t know how I made it out of that alive.

19

Moose wander around in town quite a bit. Norther Exposure like. Once driving a road that had side walks I saw that a moose and a pedestrian where gonna bump into each other. The ped couldn’t see it yet.

I stopped, lowered my window and suggested to the ped that they may want to change to the other side of the street.

20

Wow, that was terrifying! Seriously. You should submit it to MrBallen.