Janet fisher

I love living in the beauty of nature in the country. But sometimes it gets a little unnerving. There are always critters in the back country. Here’s one my son-in-law Robin Loznak met in the hills of the family farm a long way from my house.

A couple of years ago I looked out my front windows and saw a cougar–a mountain lion–waltzing down the hill road where I was planning to take a walk. I postponed my walk.

But I have lived in my house on the farm for almost 20 years and have never been visited by a bear. That all changed last week.

One morning I noticed garbage strewn across my yard and went outside to find that the garbage can was tipped over with the lid off. I cleaned it up and that afternoon went into town for groceries. When I returned, more garbage was strewn over the yard. Whatever made that mess had come out in broad daylight.

At that point Robin set up trail cams to see what was doing it. He got the next two pictures:

So, yes, now it’s lions and bears, oh my. No tigers.

In the second picture above, the bear is looking into the window on my back door. That’s when we got serious. And Robin set up more trail cams around the house. They showed nothing for a few days and then there was this:

The lights are on in the living room, the TV running. I’m in that room, either watching TV or fixing dinner. It’s a great room, all one big space.

The photo directly above is a clip from the video with sound that shows the bear watching for a while, moving to the next window where he presses his nose to the window. Sniffing the flowers just inside? He appears to be a little perplexed about the window glass. Then he shuffles off.

I did not know about this appearance outside my living room window, where he must have been watching me, until the next morning when Robin checked the trail cams. That’s when I decided I wouldn’t cook or sleep in that house until we could get the trapper out to take the bear away. I spent several nights with my kids, Robin and my daughter Carisa who live down the hill from me.

The trapper came. He put up a humongous trap. First night nothing. Next night nothing. Three nights and the trapper took the trap away, confident that the bear had moved on. The trapper did promise to have his phone by his bed and would hurry over if I called in the night. So I stayed the night in my house. Still have big chairs in front of the doors. But I slept. And went back to my normal walks.

Maybe the bear gave up because I gave him nothing more to eat. Maybe he didn’t like what I was watching on TV. Maybe he’s tired and decided it was time for his long winter sleep.

Meanwhile I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my third novel of a trilogy in which the protagonist meets a few fearsome predatory critters. I would definitely rather write about those exciting encounters than have one myself.