home

forecast weather station weather station

It's Friday March 29, 2024

News From The Village Updated Almost Daily

Update: Bear On Deck Returns
More Screens Damaged. New Concern: Propane Grillls
June 30, 2015

A
n update on the foraging bear.

Jim Root reported two weeks ago about a bear coming on to his porch in Merritt late one night. In that instance the bear tracked down – and ate seed from — a bird feeder Jim’s wife, Chris, had taken in from the yard for safekeeping. They learned that lesson. Nonetheless, this Sunday night, the bear returned.

The bear came back and was going through our porch about 2a when Chris startled it and sent it packing. Chris heard the bear enter the porch, and she came down the stairs calling my name, and then started rapping on the windows to scare the bear off. She never saw the bear, though it’s pretty clear that this is who came in early this morning. He knocked out four screens coming and going.

There’s a couple of things that come to mind over this. First among them is that the porch was clean, and so was the outside of the house. So the bear was on the porch responding to a memory of the night he got some nibbles on our porch. We had stopped feeding birdseed, but kept up feeding a hot pepper suet that squirrels and bears supposedly don’t like. This may not have been adequately explained to the bear.

The bear came in the same way it entered last time, but when it was startled, it left through two other screens. Which answers the question, which way does a frightened bear leave a screened-in porch? “Anyway it wants to,” would be the correct answer.

The bear acts more like a burglar than a pillager. It seems to want to grab a meal unnoticed, rather than just come in and take anything it damn well wants. I think this may be pretty important in the grand scheme of things.

Finally I note that our dog, Lilly (the Great Dane) did not bark until she heard Chris banging on the windows. When I pointed out that for two square meals a day and a warm bed she MIGHT give us a little warning that a 200-pound-plus animal was looting our porch, I was labeled a ‘complainer’ and both she and Chris went back to bed.

A Post-Script

The bear had also visited a home 2 doors down from us. It had climbed onto a breezeway between a house and a screened-in porch and shredded the cover to a propane grill. It also turned on one of the knobs inadvertently, though fortunately the gas was off at the bottle.

So the bear is getting even more brazen about foraging. That realization sort of makes me sick.

Posted Tuesday June 30, 2015 by Melinda Penkava


Share this page:

back to top