Bearly There ... Then Gone

There were two of them last night but I missed the first.

Frances, Namaste (our 12 pound Maltese/Bichon dog), and I walked down our quarter mile driveway about 6 pm to retrieve the mail, pausing to notice the previously unnoticed and comment upon it. I pointed out tall grasses toppled over in the north ditch and speculated about the deer that may have passed or, even, rested there. Frances said, "No, that looks more like four-wheeler tracks."

"Naw," I thought to myself, "Looks like deer to me." Although, I had to admit, the paths looked wider and more downtrodden than those typically made by deer. I didn't want to think it was a four-wheeler since it was near the top of the driveway close enough to the house to feel like a trespass. We continued on.

About two-thirds of the way downhill Frances stopped. "There's a bear!" Namaste barked wildly and headed off toward the ditch on the south side of the drive.

"Where?" I asked. I hadn't seen anything as I was too busy watching my feet.

"There," she replied, "A bear just crossed the drive." We paused. Now a large black hulk appeared on the edge of the woods on the other side of the drive. It stopped, watched, started to retreat back into the woods, stopped again, watched.

I worried, "Was this a mama bear?" You do not want to get between a mama bear and her cubs. Frances assured me that the first bear I'd missed was larger than a newborn. In fact, they seemed to be about the same size. It was obvious that this bear wanted to cross the drive too but was considering its options. Namaste, of course, ran to and fro and barked frantically. Frances and I called the dog to us. Once he was safely lifted into Frances' arms, the bear seized the moment and loped across the drive. We continued downhill discussing size, age, and relationship. The bear were about 300 pounds. Were they siblings?

When we got to their crossing point, Frances noted the smell. We both sniffed. It smelled different here ... like an intense influx of ferns and vegetation. "Funny," I thought. A friend who lives in the woods near Mille Lacs, MN told me once that you can always smell bear when they're around because their scent is so strong. From her description I assumed that bear scent was nasty. This smelled sweetly woodsy.

Mail retrieved, we re-crossed Old County K and, again, sighted one of the bear walking across the blacktop road, pausing to observe us just as we observed him (her?). S/he moved toward us, casually turned, and strolled the rest of the way across. I was struck by the easy, limber, non-lumbering way the bear moved. It reminded me of a monkey. You could tell that the front legs functioned differently from the back legs. There was surprising agility in those limbs.

Back near the top of the drive we reconsidered those crushed grasses on the north side. Huh. Perhaps they could be the trail of two bear walking side-by-side.