October 20, 2010:  Things definitely are never dull when you live in the wilderness. 

 

The weatherman gave us a reprieve.  The forecast had been for the rain to begin on Thursday.  Tuesday night they changed that to Friday.  Good, now we have 2 whole days to do some serious winter preparations.  We have lots of little things to do, but nothing major or too involved.  Two days should be more than sufficient to complete our list of chores. 

 

After breakfast we headed out.  We got as far as the new front walkway and decided we should try and repair a few problem spots on the sand seams.  We went to work.  It was much more of a process than we had planned on and spent an hour filling the cracks with the special sand.  When we finished, Nancy headed to the barn to begin the next project while Dianne hosed down the new sand.  In just a matter of seconds, Nancy was yelling for Dianne to join her and bring the camera. 

 

This is the scene we discovered.

 

Holy cow! 

 

That garbage can is a Rubbermaid Roughneck.  One tough plastic bucket.  The contents were about 100 pounds of organic fertilizer - our homemade mix, main ingredient soybean meal.  In the background, the 5-gallon gray bucket contained lime-free fertilizer for the acid loving plants. 

 

It took us both only one moment to realize what had happened.  It took something pretty darn big and tough to bend in the side of that garbage can. (Took both of us and a lot of grunting to get it back in its original shape.) We're assuming bear. But he or she was a pretty dainty eater. Never put its feet in the fertilizer and left no tracks. The teeth marks were pretty impressive though.

 

 

 

Looks like a big chomp to us!

 

This one is the mystery.

Holes too far apart to be canine teeth, no scratch marks, so hard to believe it's claws.

What made the holes? How?

 

Nancy headed to the west end of the barn for a container for the spilled fertilizer. "Dianne!!!"  Discovered that our visitor had made the complete round of the building. This was where the unused bag of soybean meal had been stored. Also kelp meal -- fortunately it was intact, because it is really expensive stuff.

 

 

We think there was a little visitor who followed the big guy to the smorgasboard. He was not as careful. He tromped all over the second garbage can.  We are guessing the second visitor was a gray fox based upon his footprints plus the fact that we have seen it scampering around here recently.

 

 

So much for our planned chores today. We spent the next few hours shop-vaccing the fertilizer from the gravel through wire mesh, to keep from picking up the rocks. At least the big ones. There will be a lot of dirt and small grit in that fertilizer next time we use it. And all the fertilizer and ingredients are now being stored in the garage for the foreseeable future.

 

We have a snack set out for our visitor. We assume he or she will come back for dinner again. It's a nice little plate of Long Shadows fertilizer, but tonight it's Cajun style. About 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper in about a cup of fertilizer. YUM! Too bad we don't have one of those motion-activated wildlife cameras. There might be a lot of wild, frantic motion out there.

 

November 2 Post Script to the story:

 

The bear came back a couple more times.  Left a huge pile of poop by the barn and did in fact eat some of the Cajun Delight we left.  Talked to one neighbor who said a gallon jug of fish emulsion was missing and found a half full soda can with some serious puncture marks.  She also thinks her old pit-bull had an encounter with it and came out on the short end of the stick.  The other neighbor said the bear had been chowing down on their molasses tainted cow food.  (We had already figured their sloppy habits is what attracted the bear in the first place.  They leave their garbage outside in open containers - always have.)  They also told us the bear tried to get into their house.  Now that got our attention.  The bear went into 3 separate buildings that we know of and was clawing at the door of the neighbor's house.  When the bear was clawing at the door, the homeowner looked through the glass and saw both momma and her cub on the other side.  DARN!  A bear with a cub can be a mean-momma.  For the last week and a half we BOTH are taking the dog for his nightly walks.  I have not resorted to carrying a pistol (which I have and know how to use).  We figure if we make enough noise as we walk we will scare the critter off.  So far we have not had a face to face encounter.  With our fierce guard dog as a companion, we assume he would let us know something was out there so we could all hightail it back to the house.