Bears at the pond, Bear Encounter 1979

You know, I considered having some bees here, however, there are black bears all over the place here.

 I should tell you about what happened last summer. It's okay to LOL and even ROTF at me.

DW and I were down at the garden harvesting some veggies to make a summer salad, while we there, we decided to pull a few weeds and lost track of time. It was around 7 pm when we noticed it was getting late, so I was going in with her to get dinner done.

So we headed up the small part of the hill and got into the middle of the bridge I built. When up from the pond area, we heard a big splash. WE BOTH STOP AND LOOKED AT EACH OTHER, WHAT WAS THAT????? Being braver of the two of us, I continue around to the walkway up to the pond, told DW to get on the side deck and keep the kids in.

SUDDENLY, PHOOOOOSSSHHHHH, ploppppp..... At this time I will admit, I was about to drop a brown trout in my shorts But as I got up to the top of the hill, I saw a she bear with one cub. The cub was fooling around, wet, and the mother bear was fishing. Yes, she was sitting on her back side leaned over, trying to catch female large mouth bass that were bedding.

Now, there is one rule you have to remember, don't get between a momma bear and her cub.

So my first reaction was to raise my arms above my head and growl like a bigfoot. Now I wish I would have got out of there and came back with the camera. But I was nervous and my first bear scare as an adult. Now the bear got up, made a grnting noise and just calmy mosied back up the hill keeping her cub near her. the rest of the evening was spent talking about taking photos of the bear next time...

In July, 1979, I encountered my first bear, I was 9 y/o.

My grandfather sent me up the driveway to fetch the days mail, his driveway to the road is 1/8 of a mile. A nice friendly walk, lots to look at, skip some, the carefree stuff kids do. It was really cool thing to do for Grandpa, as we weren't asked very often to get the mail.

Coming back from the mailbox, on the right are some wild blackberry bushes. As I past by them, they began to shake, I could here some cracking and what sounded like something big moving through them. I stop, looked up to the house, just a split second thinking how far the house looked at that second.

Man, I put my little shoes into overdrive and started to run towards the house. We were often warned about the bears around his house, we sometimes could see them crossing the field from the piture window. It took me about 5 seconds to cover 100 feet. During my run, I had dropped the mail.

Trying to catch my breath, I looked back to see where I had dropped the mail, and wouldn't you know it. There was dag gone Grandpa, bent over howl laughing at me, I was mad so ran back down to punch him in the leg. But as I got closer, he was still laughing, I notice he had tears in his eyes, grabbing his side, I started to laugh with him.

For some years, that story would be told by him at xmas dinners, at the VFW bar, and when I would meet one of his friends for the first time.

Thanksgiving dinner 2006 would be the last time he would tell that story and he told it to my son, his great grandchild who was ten and laughed at me almost as hard as my grandpa did. Grandpa passed 15 Sept. 2007. Rest in peace Grandpa I love you!!!

Every summer we would spend two weeks with him, and you could always find me sitting on the fender of his ford tractor with a leaf of Red Man chew in my mouth.