Bear Encounters

The cool weather this spring has delayed the typical plant growth in the forest. The trees took some extra time to leaf out, and the flowers and underbrush are behind, too. I went to gather some wildflowers to put in to a cabin, and it was slim pickings. This is just a minor inconvenience for me, but for the animals, it is a much more serious issue.

In particular, I have read that the bears are challenged in finding enough food to fill their bellies after the long winter. Strawberry blossoms are just starting to peek out, so it will be a while before that fruit is available. The blackflies are still very much with us, and that has me thinking that they haven't finished their job of pollinating the blueberries, so we will wait longer yet for those tasty treats. The foliage on the thimbleberry bushes is still quite small. It all adds up to very little sustenance for the bears. And that means that they are looking elsewhere.

If we have bears in camp, their first stop is the garbage shed. I wrote three years ago how Addie and I were dealing with a bear when Greg and the boys were on a trip to Alaska. That time, I put a hasp with a turning clasp on the shed door, and the bear took one look at it and tossed it on the ground. Never mind that it took me about a half hour to properly install it, with my limited powertool skills. Since then, we haven't had that many intruders, so a new system for locking up the garbage shed has never been installed. When Greg had built the new door some years back, he planned to finish it with quarter iron all around the edge. That way a bear would have a difficult time getting a good purchase on it, as they can with wood. With no immediate need to do this, it fell lower on the priority list.

Until a few weeks ago, that is. I noticed the door open wide on the shed one day, and there on the ground at the base of the porch was all the evidence of a bear binge. We've been through this drill before....we know to follow the trail, with rake and shovel, well into the woods, to pick up the garbage strewn about. This time we were lucky that the shed wasn't very full, so it was only a bag or two that needed to be cleaned up. Greg took care of it, and when he came back inside, he complained that he could still smell bear. I couldn't, so I have no idea what bear smells like.

That day, he cleared his schedule and worked on the door. He put the iron in place, and then worked on a new latch. The one that he came up with, to me, is a real stroke of genius. If a bear can figure this one out, I'll be a monkey's uncle...or aunt, as the case may be.

So far, so good. The garbage has stayed in the shed, and the ground has been clear. We're one step ahead of the bear.