Da Bears

My darling wife has a fear of bears. I mean the kind of fear that causes nightmares or as the case may be, nightbears. It comes from a close encounter with a bear she had in North Carolina as a child. She's never actually seen a bear in the wild but once when she and her sister walked down to the river where she was told not to go, but of course did, she, her sister, and the accompanying dogs heard the bear. Ever since, bears, or even the mention of bears cause quivers and a wide eyed "deer in the headlights" expression.

So when we decided to move to these mountains one of the first questions was, are there bears? "Well, maybe", was my rather nonchalant reply.

On one of the trips here before we moved we were visiting the birthplace of Booker T. Washington. As we walked the trail on the farm she suddenly gave the shout I've heard often. "BEAR!" She ran, I didn't since I saw the cattle calmly grazing away on the hill and realizing that if there were indeed a "BEAR" the bovines would be rapidly moving on. Now fear was replaced by anger at my seeming calm over a potentially disastrous encounter. It was only when I pointed out the black bull now staring at us that the fear and anger turned to a sheepish grin.

OK, so we moved here and guess what? That's right, exactly one week after the U-Haul was returned the neighbor came over and and asked, "Did you see the BEAR last night?". Well, no, but we did hear the dogs go crazy. It seems Mr. Black Bear had walked up the road and into the woods behind our house. It may have even waved as it went by.

Now lets fast forward to several days ago when on coming back from taking the dogs for a walk Wanda said to me, "there were some very large tracks on the trail down to the creek and then on the gravel road". Then came the obvious question, "do you think it was a BEAR?" Now I do everything to discourage the notion there is a BEAR in the neighborhood so I tried to play it off with a "probably not".

So the other night we're talking to the new neighbors from Florida when we hear what sounds like a barking dog. Then the other neighbor pulls up in her SUV and says those dreaded words, "Did you see the BEAR?"
She said she looked out her window and saw what appeared to be a large man in a black coat crawling up the road and the she realized that doesn't happen around here but BEARS do. My wife instantly assumed the "deer in the headlight" appearance and suggested we move our conversation from the road to the deck. We did that with haste. The barking sound we heard was our other neighbor attempting to move the BEAR along which it did, again through the woods behind our house.

That night everyone concerned had every outside light on...all night. Further BEAR sightings will be reported.