After an uneventful day, I was winding down and working on edits. My dogs Joey and Tyler began to whine and pace, so I assumed they needed to go out. Due to their barking, I let them out separately at night because one dog makes less noise than two dogs. I let Tyler out first. He went potty and ran around the house, barking like a maniac. Of course he ignored my calls. I went out the kitchen door and walked up the path and spotted him dancing around on his hind legs. I didn't think much of it and walked to the beginning of the driveway. He reluctantly returned to me. I let Joey out the back door. He went potty and came in. End of story....so I thought.
Fifteen minutes later, both dogs began barking like crazy! I heard the same noise they did and ran to the kitchen door. I flipped the light on and there stood a beautiful 300 lb black bear. I'm not sure why, but I felt it was a female -- not a huge bear, but big enough. She stood on the deck intently pawing at the recycling bin. She was after the bag of garbage that Bob had put out there earlier. She stepped away from the porch and fool that I am, I opened the door and banged on the side of the house hollering "Get out of here! Go on, get!" The bear did as I expected and rambled toward the neighbor's fence. Joey ran out the door. Luckily he's sometimes a bit daft. The bear had gone right, Joey ran to the left. By this time, Bob is up and looking for the bear too. We got Joey inside, shut the door and locked it.
OK, so we're all safely inside, Bob went back to bed and I just couldn't stand it. I wanted to see the bear again. The back of our house has an atrium door (all glass). You step out onto a large balcony with four steps that lead to the ground. I went outside and walked to the edge of the balcony, my safe observation point. I looked by the neighbor's fence and couldn't see the bear. I heard a snort and looked down - OMG she was standing at the bottom of our steps! Since she was a matter of a few feet away, she looked a whole lot bigger.
In retrospect, I think I made some kind of a noise. I'm not a screamer, so that wasn't it. I whirled around and ran to the door. In my haste to avoid becomming bear fodder, I tripped at the door and fell into the house. I scrambled the rest of the way inside, reached up and locked the door. Yes, I was still on the floor. Bob got up again to see what the heck I was doing this time! I told him what I had done and he wanted to see the bear too. He opened the door and she was gone. He went back to the kitchen door and opened it. No bear. He went back to bed.
Ten minutes later there was a noise at the kitchen door. The dogs went wild. So did Bob, as he was trying to sleep. There were cans and bottles all over the ground. Bob said "Oh my! The garbage bag is gone! She took the whole bag!" Folks, I gotta tell you, a 300 lb bear dragged an overstuffed bag of garbage up the stone filled path and half way up a rocky driveway without it breaking! The commercial on TV where the little boy drags a Glad ForceFlex bag through the house was nothing, compared to this. Bob went out the atrium door to look and there was no bear. We looked on the side yards, no bear. He went out the kitchen door and I was right behind him with a butcher knife just in case he got attacked. She was gone. How rude. Eat and run.
Bob got up at five, after a terrible night's sleep. Now that it was light out, we could see the bag over halfway way up the driveway. She dragged it seventy five feet. Gotta go now. Gonna write to Glad. Maybe they'll pay me a million dollars for my story. hehe
Tika :)
OK, here it is; and no laughing. This is my new perennial bed. It's been a vision for only a few days. I ordered three bareroot subzero hibiscus and they are mere twigs; but they're in there! In the middle I planted three giant bulbs called Casablanca lilies. I saw them on a TV show and had to have them! They are currently growing about half an inch a day. Incredible.
