Small Black Bear

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Black bears and deer are like bloody pigeons around here.  They're bloody everywhere.  We had two black bears in the yard last autumn.  There were still a few pears left on one of the trees so they blasted through the fence to get to them.  First time I'd ever seen bears work as a team.  One climbed up the trunk and then bent the branches down and then the other would bat the fruit off.  Once they'd finished with the pears, they battered the garbage can around and managed to get the city-approved bear-proof lid off with a few whacks.  They lazed around for a bit then then the neighbour's dog sparked up and spooked them and they blasted a hole through another part of the fence and buggered off.

They're often on the hiking trail just outside my place as well as both sides of the trail are covered with blackberry bushes.  Here's one of my fave photos featuring one of the hairy buggers getting some cardio in after chowing down on berries.

[Gusington]

The people up ahead - they had no idea or were they making themselves scarce?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

No idea it was there.

[Gusington]

Bwahaha unreal!

[Sir Slash]

Is that a black bear or Jarhead with his shirt off? And pants too.... no, wait. OK. it's a bear. I know a guy who lives outside of town and raises goats. I asked him once if he had problems with coyotes  trying to kill his livestock and he said no, not coyotes but there were a lot of feral dogs that routinely tried to kill his goats. Lots of different breeds, some former pets and some raised wild. Usually lead by an alpha-male type and they were quite dangerous he told me. I had no idea. 

[Ubercat]

Many years ago I worked with a guy who told me how he'd been out hiking and got treed by a pack of feral dogs. They spotted him from the distance and immediately started closing in. He ran for a tree and climbed up but couldn't get a secure perch. He was hanging and close to falling when a hunter started shooting at the dogs and scared them away. Probably happened in Pennsylvania I'm guessing.

[JasonPratt]

Ah, coincidentally reminds me, the blackberry bushes outside the shop are ripe-ing up now!

(Other reminder: birds defiling my car with blackberry waste products.)

[Sir Slash]

The Purple Martins have left for the Great North, the Martin House is empty-- except for the shitty Sparrows-- and I am sad.     Better have a drink later to compensate.

[airboy]

Ah, coincidentally reminds me, the blackberry bushes outside the shop are ripe-ing up now!

(Other reminder: birds defiling my car with blackberry waste products.)

Beware chiggers if you pick them.

[Sir Slash]

Chiggers? Better 'scratch' that idea Jason. 

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

We've had a lot more bear sightings than normal this year.  I wonder if it's due to a change in people's patterns due to the lockdowns.  The bears are more aggressive than normal too.  A 10 year old was bitten by a black bear near my workplace about a month ago and this fella showed up on my hiking trail a week ago to cop a feel.

Top of the trail is still closed down as the conservation officers try to trap it.  I suspect that it's been fed by people and is now associating humans with food.  This area has a lot of recent immigrants from Korea, China, and Iran.  They aren't used to being so close to nature and a lot of them get excited and try to approach the animals to take videos or worse, try to feed them.  There are signs warning against this behaviour but a lot of people just ignore them.

Just yesterday, I was taking a stroll through the neighbourhood and saw a group of people milling about with their phones out, filming someone's driveway.  When I got closer, one of them excitedly yelled "Gom!  Gom!" at me.  Having taught in Korea, I knew this was the Korean word for "bear".  Sure enough, there was a big fella just lying there on the cement, chowing down on some garbage he'd retrieved from a city-approved not-so-bear-proof garbage cans.  Then one of the idiot women filming went into her car, pulled out some sort of rice-bun looking things and tossed it towards the bear.  It does no good to habituate them like this.  Sooner or later it'll have a run-in with someone or someone's dog and the conservation officers will have to put it down and then get raked over the coals for it by the ever-offended Karens who infest this city.

[Gusington]

We have a family of three cubs and one mother living in a den about 1000 feet from my house, along with 'fishers' which look like black bear cubs except they have tails. A local nature lab has placed hunting cameras just off our property because the fishers are very rare. Until this summer I had never even heard of a fisher. Hopefully those hunting cameras will not pick up anything...else...back there. 

[Sir Slash]

Such as a Gus Bear or maybe a bare Gus? 

[solops]

Is that a black bear or Jarhead with his shirt off? And pants too.... no, wait. OK. it's a bear. I know a guy who lives outside of town and raises goats. I asked him once if he had problems with coyotes  trying to kill his livestock and he said no, not coyotes but there were a lot of feral dogs that routinely tried to kill his goats. Lots of different breeds, some former pets and some raised wild. Usually lead by an alpha-male type and they were quite dangerous he told me. I had no idea. 

Around here none of the country folk go for a walk without weapon(s). After all, supper might run right by you.

[Gusington]

The Wife has almost been supper 2-3 times in the last year.