Bearly Seen

Last Thursday EJ and I went to the home improvement store to buy supplies for the floor in our exercise room, a corner of which was ruined by our leaky roof. He bought underlayment, tile, and a couple other things. EJ was going to get wall board, but decided to buy that later after the floor was fixed. We decided to tile the floor rather than replace the carpet because we have cats that sometimes barf on the floor and tile is easier to clean or replace than carpet. Also EJ suffers from chronic back pain and the tiles don’t come in a heavy roll that strains his back and it’s easier to install.

Saturday morning we learned that toxic smoke from Canada’s wildfires is expected to return so we decided to run some errands before it reached us. We stopped at the farm store for more poultry feed and then headed to the hardware store where EJ bought components to build a Corsi-Rosenthal Box. It is a powerful air purifier that can be built very easily using a box fan and four furnace filtures for a fraction of the price of a commercially manufactured one. When the smoke clogged our skies a couple weeks ago, we dug out the air purifying that we were storing for our son, who has moved to Alaska. However, it’s relatively small and not very powerful. With the Corsi-Rosenthal Box, we are ready for the toxic smoke–although it would be much better if there was no smoke in the sky at all.

Our rooster, Richard VI, continues escaping the fence despite our efforts to stop him. One of these days, he’s going to get carried off by a predator: A coyote, a bobcat, a bear…

Early yesterday evening I was sitting on the couch when I glanced out the window and saw….a black bear? I could scarcely believe my eyes! We have lived here for 11 years and I’ve never seen a bear, although I’ve heard a report or two of a sighting in past years.

I whispered urgently to EJ, who was sitting in his comfy chair, scrolling at X.

“Bear!”
EJ didn’t look up.
“A bear, EJ! There’s a bear! Out in the orchard. A BEAR!”
He said, “What? Your not kidding me?”
He came over to the window. “There’s a BEAR!”

It briefly sniffed one of the apple trees. It ignored the bird feeders. Then it wandered out of sight around the house. We quickly shut the windows…because there was a bear outside! Then we moved into the bedroom to look out the window into the back yard. We watched the bear walk along the perimeter of our garden fence. It put it’s nose up once and sniffed before it continued its walk and disappeared into the forest. I tried to get a video, but it wasn’t very good. The bear looked youngish.

Fortunately, Theo and Harvey, our outside cats, were shut safely in the garage. I had already shut the chickens up in their coop a few minutes before. When I had gone out to the coop, the chickens had begun squawking loudly, as they do when they are aware of a threat. I searched their coop to see if I could figure out what their problem was, but found nothing. I wonder now if they were aware of the bear, even though they were all inside the coop.

Poor little Clara, our inside cat. Her tail was poofed up to twice it’s normal size. I told her that I totally understood. If I had a tail, it would be poofed up too. Clara’s tail is unique in that it is permanently curled up over her body. Whenever she sees something disturbing–a strange cat, a raccoon, a BEAR! as she sits looking out the window, her tail poofs to bigger than normal size. It happens much more frequently than the tails of other cats.

I looked up information about bears in our area. I learned that the black-bear population in our county “has grown substantially (statewide estimates recently around 12,000–12,450, with roughly 2,000+ in the Lower Peninsula and continued range expansion). Sightings that were rarer 10–15 years ago are becoming more frequent as densities increase and animals push into suitable rural and semi-rural areas. Local reports over the years confirm bears are present in the broader region of [our] county.

Michigan DNR sources list black bear mating season as occurring from June to July. Some references note activity can peak in June–July and occasionally extend toward early August, with males (especially) traveling widely in search of receptive females. Late July is toward the end of the main window, so a brief wander is still consistent with residual breeding-season movement rather than a complete mismatch with the calendar.

Yearlings and subadults commonly disperse in spring through summer as they leave their mothers and establish their own home ranges. Males in particular can travel long distances. A transient individual passing through a rural yard is therefore unremarkable, especially in good bear habitat.

Other contributing factors can include:

• Simple passage through familiar or newly explored territory.
• Natural ranging within large male home ranges (often tens of square miles).
• Temporary displacement by logging, human activity, other bears, or changes in local food abundance.

I will now cross of “Seeing a bear in the wild” from my list. It was interesting and exciting to see the bear, but we really don’t want it to hang around. I don’t want to walk outside and come face-to-face with a bear. That’s NOT on my list of thngs to experience.

I’ve decided to stop filling my bird feeders. But we have apple trees and berry bushes, tempting meals for a bear when it decides to gorge itself in preparation for it’s winter sleep.