Uninvited Guest Part 1

The Bear Problem

The raider of my feeder.

I used to feed the birds year round.  I always loved seeing the spring and summer visitors to the feeder. The colorful Cardinals and Goldfinches were among the those that came to my feeder.  I had two feeders in the front of our house.  One was a standard hanging feeder on a large pine and the other was an old bird bath that I used as feeder.  The first thing I noticed, when we moved into our new house in the Albany, NY area was how much seed I was going through in the spring. We lived in a wooded area and I had seen several deer around so I assumed it was just them emptying my bird feeders.

I thought it was only these guys raiding my feeder.

I continued to fill the feeders a lot over the course of the spring.  I also found the hanging feeder on the ground or hanging funny at least a couple times over the next few weeks.  Again, I thought it was the deer.  I had heard of Black Bears destroying feeders but still wasn't convinced.  My parents in Vermont had a couple of feeders destroyed by bears and their back window broken by a bear trying to get at their Hummingbird feeder.

The First Encounter

We had been away all weekend visiting relatives and we had gotten home in the early evening.  It was early June and I had been battling Carpenter Ants all spring.  I unpacked the cars and then went outside to continue the battle with the ants.  I had just finished spraying in the back and was working on the side of the house nearest the two feeders.  I looked up from spraying and I saw something black walking in the front woods.  I assumed it was a neighbor's dog that had gotten loose.  I stood up and started walking towards it to get a better look.  That is when I noticed this dog was walking funny and was pretty big.  I stupidly kept walking towards it(bad idea looking back on it).  I got about 150 feet away from it when I saw this was no dog.  It was bear!

At that moment, I'm not sure who was more surprised the bear or me.  Looking back, I did the wrong thing and ran as fast I could to our back porch.  I know, I know you are suppose to walk backwards slowly but it's easy to forget when you are surprised by such a large animal.  I started banging on the backdoor slider for my wife to let me in.  "There is a bear! Let me in! Let me in!"  She and my son thought this was very funny.  They finally let me in and couldn't believe the story I told them.  We looked out the windows but the bear was long gone.

After that I stopped filling both of the feeders and was a little more careful when I went outside especially if I had my son with me.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 of the story.

Have you had an encounter with a bear or other large animals?  Tell us about it in the comments.