vta;2871010 said:
Luckily not where I live, but sometimes things get too close when I visit family who do have bear problems. North West Jersey has a lot of bears, and it's a pretty cold feeling when you hear a grunt from the yard when walking to your car in the dark.
It's worse in the fall because it gets dark early and you can't see squat. How they live like that, I don't know. I don't mind seeing deer when I look out a window, but I don't even want to see a bear.
My wife was worried about the very same thing when we moved to the mountains eight years ago. She even came literally face to face with a big black early one morning when we had first gotten here. We have a little log cabin out behind the other little log cabin we live in that she uses for an office.She heard a racket below her desk window,and thinking it was squirrels getting into the metal can we use for bird seed,opened the window and looked out to shoo them away. The bear was standing up,so he was 'eyeball to eyeball' with her. It surprised her so much she let out a little shout and closed the window. The bear let out a little surprised 'ruff' and hauled butt back up the mountain,twice as scared as she was,I'm sure. That was the big excitement around here and the talk of the family for awhile.
Then one day,not too long afterwards,my wife must have had some sort of epihany,because she said to me, "You know,this was their mountain long before we got here. We left the big dirty hot crowded city to live in the mountains,and I'm trying to bring the city here......That's wrong".From then on,we learned to not only live and coexist with the other mountain inhabitants,but appreciate them as well.
We still get visits every now and then from "Billy Bear",as we call him,and I catch him on the game cam from time to time,and it's worked out well for all concerned. We are nothing but stewards of "their" mountain.
