You hear that?!? BEARS!!

The other night, the neighboring dog treed a bear. It was just a little bear, only about two years old and probably the same one Andy and I spotted wandering around near the road about a month ago. Last night when I went for a walk after supper, I carefully picked my way around two fairly fresh piles of bear poo. It seems everyone's seen a bear this season.

“I think it’s going to be a bad night,” Andy whispered, just as I was about to fall asleep last night. “I think the bear’s going to get into something tonight.”

"Don't be so creepy," I grumbled.

But I knew he was right to worry. There was garbage in the back of his truck and it seems inevitable that a bear will find its way to the grill on the porch before too long. We've been lackadaisical when it comes to keeping our backyard free of bear smorgasbord.

Still, we found an undisturbed backyard and porch this morning. But we did find a message waiting on the local community website though:

The unseasonable weather may have something to do with the abundance of bears in people territory this spring. Our early, early spring roused the bears at an ungodly hour and with the decided lack of rain, the forest probably hasn’t been offering bears the best eating. I know I get a little bolder when I’ve gotten up too early and can’t find anything decent to eat!

Now, when the dogs around the bay start to bark, I start wondering if there’s a bear afoot. I don’t have a fear of bears, but I’m not exactly seeking out encounters with them either. When it comes to mammals on my porch, I’d rather have something like chipmunks scampering around. But if I expect bears to “stay in the woods” and then I go right ahead and move into the woods, well, it’s not the bears’ fault if my place is the first place they come knocking when food’s scarce.

The bears may be less than thrilled with our spring, but the garden’s so pleased with the warm weather that you can almost watch it grow before your very eyes. In no time at all, there'll be lettuce and arugula to eat.

I’d been worried about putting the little seedlings I’d started inside, thinking they might need a little more coddling before I placed them out in the volatile outdoors. As the plants in the garden have grown and grown this week, the seedlings inside did next to nothing. It seemed apparent that it was time to get the majority of plants into the ground.

Currently, it’s 78 degrees and muggy, making it at least the seventh day in a row with a high in the 70s, if not 80s. It’s hard to feel terribly bothered with “frosts” when the highs are so very high.

Still, if frost isn’t a worry, drought is, for both me and the bears. Another good soaking rain is probably the best way to get the bears back to playing in their gardens and me playing in mine. In a perfect world,