Home Sweet Home

We had some excitement here last Saturday night.

A mama bear and her teenage cub got in to our trashcan, made a total mess and then broke down our gate.

You totally didn’t expect that, did you? Yeah, me neither. We didn’t even find out until our neighbor rang our doorbell on Sunday morning. He heard the ruckus, looked out the window and saw the whole thing. We had forgotten to turn off the a/c and open the window, so we missed it. I’m glad we did. Our window is at the wrong angle to have seen the bears, so who knows what we would have done if we’d heard someone or something breaking down the gate.

Speaking of the gate – this was the same one that the deck people used while building our new deck. It may or may not have gotten whacked a couple of times by building material. It did get broken when a gust of wind caught it, back in June. My parents were visiting at the time, so my dad took it upon himself to fix the gate.

My dad is a great Fixer of Things. If you have a fix-it project, my dad is the one to call. He will do that job and do it right. Which is what he did with the gate. He took the time to hunt down the materials to repair the gate and repair it he did. We were grateful, because honestly, with 4 children at home we don’t always have time to address problems like that.

So, my dad fixed the gate and fixed it well. Alas, the bears broke it down.

Hi, dad!

Now the gate is propped up along the fence, because we’re classy like that.

And because bears will return to the scene of the crime, we had to move the trash cans in to the garage.

Did I mention it gets hot here in summer? Exactly. It’s a bit oderiferous in the garage now.

I’ve been online researching bear-proof trash can options. They are expensive. We could go with what looks like a regular trash can, but has some sort of child-lock lid thing. The only problem is that trash companies may not accept them because you can’t just dump them out, you’ve got to stop and undo the lid.

Another solution is a metal box thing that will hold the trashcans. Those are really expensive, but might be the only option.

So, who was it that had to move to the mountains?

Oh, right. That would be me.

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He was a hairy bear, he was a scary bear.

(Ha! Did you see what I just did?  I described him with adjectives!)

The children and I had been at the park across the street and on our way home I saw that bear investigating our neighbor’s tree.  He was three houses from ours, so he wasn’t exactly between us and safety. Still, he was cause for concern.

We stayed on the park side of the street and as we came directly across from him, I waved and said, “Hi!”.  I was hoping to install a “friends, not food” attitude in him.  Well, he took one look at us and took off behind the house.  Before we reached home, we saw him re-emerge from behind another house about two doors down from ours on the other side.  He crossed the street and disappeared behind those houses.

Once  home, I did a little bear safety research.  Turns out that I did the exact right thing in waving my arms and making noise.  That’s when I found out that bears can open lever-handled doors and get in windows.  But generally, they’ll only do that if they smell food, but not humans.

Tami Nomad asked me what to do if a hairy, scary bear is lurking around your door. Beats me!  There are lots of things to do to make your home less inviting to bears, mainly keeping your garbage out of reach, keeping pet food inside, and cleaning your grill clean.  If they don’t smell it, they won’t bother you.

At least in theory.

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