Night Raiders

    Last night at 9:45, I was upstairs reading.  Skye, our dog was downstairs in bed with Joan.  I heard Skye growl.  This is something she rarely does, but she has lots of nightmares, and I figured that she was just vocalizing one of those.  Then, I heard something crash outside.  I began to wonder if there was a bear outside.  I came down to investigate.

    Joan’s bedroom was still dark and I was a bit surprised, she hadn’t heard Skye’s growl or the crash.  I went to the carport door, turned on the outside light, and looked out of the window.  I saw a small dark shape walking out of the carport, it was a bear cub.  It was heading for the porch, so I went to the kitchen and looked out of that window.  There was a mother bear on the front porch and the two cubs nosing around, exploring the area.

    Skye, joined me, and Joan woke up.  The bear trio, then turned around went back through the carport, and I thought maybe they were leaving, but then I heard commotion on our back deck, so Joan, a growling Skye, and myself all went to the dining room window and turned on the outside light to the back deck.  We were just in time to see the big bear turn over the barbecue, and watched as it crashed to the ground.

    The mother couldn’t open the hood of the barbecue, where we were storing a bowl of soup, so she went to the table to check out the zucchini that were sitting there (night vision photo above).   It would have been okay with me if she would have eaten the zucchini, but she wasn’t interested in them.  (In the photo above, one of the cubs is just to the left of the mama bear, and the other is just over her rump, buy the tree.

    Since the bears where just on the other side of the window, I decided that it would be best to try to scare them off.  So I started making a loud hooting sound.  It worked, well sort of, the mother bear turned and quickly walked off of the back deck, but the two cubs scampered up the tree, you see in the back ground of the above photo.

    I knew that the mother bear wouldn’t go very far with the cubs up the tree, so we just waited silently, and after about 5 minutes the two cubs came back down the tree.  I took some photos of their descent, and made a composite of two photos so you can see both of them at the same time (Below).

    Then the whole family reunited on the deck, and I again made the loud hooting sound, while Skye continued to growl and this time they all ran off of the deck and into the night.  The bottom photo shows what the deck looked like this morning.  Fortunately, the bowl (of soup) which was in the barbecue didn’t break and so despite all of last night’s excitement, not much damage was done.

    I really feel sorry for the bears, I think they are really scrambling to find food, the berry crop this year was poor, and they have a long winter to get through.

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