"There's a Bear Laying in the Yard"

    Last evening when my wife said that, it certainly got my attention.  We immediately put Kona upstairs, where she wouldn’t see the bear, and I grabbed my camera to take a look.  Indeed, there was a black bear laying in the yard, and it took a while for me to figure out why it was lying there.  It was just leisurely eating the marble-sized crab apples that had fallen from the tree.  

    I watched the bear for a long time and took a lot of photos.  It was getting dark outside and my camcorder had trouble with the low light, but my iPhone adjusted nicely to the low light (above).  With my computer I was able to tweak some of the camcorder shots enough so you can see what was going on.  In the photo below, the bear is scratching its back on the crab apple tree trunk.

    The other day my wife saw a mother bear with two cubs, so this one must be a different bear.  

    We were worried about Lucifer our cat, who was outside at the time.  She is usually in her nest on the front porch, not far from where the bear was.  Fortunately, she is a smart cat and must have slipped away when she saw the bear, and walked around the house, climbed up the post to the balcony, where we found her in her nest there.

See my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca