Bear!!

Did someone say bear?

The other day, Mum finished up her meetings, fed us and then let us outside for our evening play session, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

I ran the fence line, in the front of our yard closest to the car, going back and forth, back and forth, going crazy and barking up a storm, with Gracie right on my heels.

At first Mum thought it was a squirrel on the outside of the fence, which can get me riled up, but Mum noticed I was even more manic than I usually am for a squirrel.

Just then I stopped, right at the fence line by the car and looked under....Mum took a look too and saw something under the car. What was it?

It was a bear!!! OMD!!! Really? A bear, under our car? Do you see it? (Mum didn't want to get any closer to take another photo).

Seems I saw it on the other side of the car, tried to herd it by running the fence line and scared the heck out of the poor little thing; so much so that it scooted under the car to hide and get away.

The bear was too big to be a cub (so we didn't worry too much about it's Mom nearby, although we looked often) and it was too small to be a full adult. Mum suspected (and later DNR confirmed for us) that it was a teenager, just recently rejected by it's Mom to begin finding its own way in the world, which is why it was smaller, longer, skinnier and ganglier, looking like many teenagers can be.

At first Mum thought it was another dog because it had started raining and thundering and lightening. But on closer look it was clear that this wasn't any dog (way too big) and just as Mum and I bent down to look a little closer, I barked, and it let out a little growl/roar. Whoa baby!! Time to get inside, Mum said.

Mum watched it for a while, then believe it or not it was starting to get dark and Gracie and I hadn't had our last 'do your business' trip. So Mum carefully leashed us up, told us we could bark all we wanted (to further scare the bear away) and we ventured out for our last potty of the night. Aren't we brave!!!

We did very well, then went inside to leave the bear alone and hope that it decided to take off soon. We went in and just about 20 minutes later Mum looked out again and it was gone. Dang! We wanted to see it leave.

But we were relieved, and ventured out for a little run around the cabin before it got too dark. How exciting!! Our first bear sighting!