Da Bears!

At poker this week the main topic of conversation was the neighborhood bears. At the house the game was held in, they had to pick all the grapefruits from their trees this week as the bears were making a habit of coming into their yard and having a snack. At the house next door, George was watching a bear looking through the glass of his back door going nose-to-nose with his dog when he heard the garage door opening and knew his wife and kids were about to get out of the car not 20 feet away from the bear. At Dennis's house around the corner from us he has to clean up the bear crap every morning from his yard, as they are coming nightly for his fruit trees and then relieving themselves on his lawn (not in the woods!).

Thursday night my son comes in at around 8:30 and says he almost hit a bear bounding across the street (leaving George's house at that). He slammed on his brakes, stopping the car and then just stared at the bear, who after making it to the "safety" of the greenbelt bushes across the street just sat there looking at him.

Today my wife was working in the front yard when she noticed ripped open bags of green beans in the planter by our front door. Then she noticed some of the plants we planted on Monday were crushed. Then she noticed the bones on top of the wall between our house and the neighbors. When I got out there we noticed the muddy paw prints all up and down the wall where the bear shimmied over the wall into our yard.

I feel things are coming to a head; the bears are everywhere and something bad is going to happen soon. Yikes!