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Two Weird Days in a Row in My Front Yard
I got a knock on the door yesterday around 5:00 pm. Upon answering I found a guy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail, a beard, hiking boots, and a dress with a Greenpeace T-Shirt over it.
He introduced himself as Katrina.
He was asking for donations to “save the world” as “we are running out of time.” I asked what the plans were for the money; he said to sue corporations who are destroying our planet.
I explained that the fastest way to save the planet was to lift everyone out of poverty (while noting that capitalism was making amazing progress in that regard) because no one was going to care about the planet while they were feeding their kids dirt soup. And that we needed corporations for that.
Quickly noting I was a lost cause, he said he “had limited time to save the planet” (which I thought was kind of clever), and excused himself.
My only regret is that I didn’t tell him to call his mother.
This morning my daughter went out the front to get her girls in their car seats. She and I and my son-in-law were standing on the porch talking … when in our avocado tree we discovered a huge bear. Running into the house would have left the little girls alone (but safe) out front in the car. Not knowing what to do, we pulled out our phones and took pictures.
Here’s the only good one I got once he (she? it? they?) climbed down.
Related to this experience, last week in our neighboring town of Sierra Madre a man was mauled by a bear after its cub attacked his dog. I followed the story on FB, where everyone unanimously took the side of the bear and cub. We have encroached on their habitat, they mean us no harm, we can live side by side, mamma bear was protecting her cub, blah blah blah
The bears got the sleepy shots, and DNA tests were done to ensure they had the right bears. They were relocated to the high desert and released into the wild. The next day they were busted rummaging in a dipsy dumpster in Lancaster, got the shots again and were relocated again to an undisclosed location.
I’ve been predicting for a while that the bear problem around here was getting out of control and someone was going to get hurt. There have been several people I know who have had real property damage from a bear breaking into their garage and rummaging through their refrigerator. One got in our across-the-street neighbor’s kitchen a few years ago. And while Monrovia is “the gem of the foothills,” I am many blocks south of any undeveloped land and only two blocks north of Foothill Blvd (the old Route 66)
After meeting Katrina yesterday, my first words to my husband were, “we gotta get out of here.” After the bear encounter this a.m., I’ll be repeating them to him …
Published in General
I’ve always wondered why they just didn’t realign the states, using the Cascades as the new states’ boundary: blue Orewash and red Gonington.
Have you given Fish and Game in your area a call about the bear?In our area, they seem very responsive.
Last summer on our usual evening walk, I noticed a rabbit hippity hopping up a hill. Then Mark and I realized that it was a brand spanking new bear cub. Both of us and the dog high tailed it out of there. Not for fear of said cub, but because Mama Bear was probably not far behind.
The next day I phoned the owner of the property. He had not yet seen this cub, but the momma was spotted close to his front porch several nights earlier.
Fish and Game here in Lake County was willing to have an enclosed pen set up to capture the bear and cub – within 48 hours if we wanted it. But apparently mom and baby went off to a wilderness area further to the east of us, as no one saw them after those two initial sightings.
When I was in Washington in the late 50s, there was a semi-serious effort to break the eastern part off from Seattle. The new state would be called “Lincoln.” I never figured out how serious it was. Remember some Washington history. It was a state with “Blue Laws” and almost became a dry state. The liquor industry did a very clever thing to forestall that movement. It got an initiative passed to sell liquor only in state-owned stores with the profits to go to the medical school.
When I lived there, not that long, there was no drinking after midnight Saturday and women could not be in a bar. They had to be in another room, so bars had a fence to separate an area where women could drink. Also, no one could stand and drink at a bar. There could be no more men at a bar than the number of bar stools.
When I first visited Seattle, women were not allowed to sit at the bar, even if accompanied by their husband. It was all very proper with bars for men only and restaurants for men and women. My daughters are amazed when I tell them I’ve never been in a bar without my husband or one of my sons in my whole married life, even when we lived in Alaska. The one exception I can think of was when I visited my daughter who was getting her masters at Tulane in New Orleans who took me to a bar where the Tulane kids used to hang out.
And to think I laughed at someone from CA who told me that children aren’t allowed in bars there.
But what if the children are gay, or transgender or something? That’s discrimination!!!
I was thinking of my dad, My grandpa used to leave him in the car while he went to the bar to drink – then drive them home.
How about this one? From Canmore, Ab this past weekend:
https://globalnews.ca/news/5472960/canmore-bear-restaurant/
Comments like the above always crack me up. I had an almost encounter with a mountain lion years ago. Search and Rescue and all my hiker/runner friends said “it was more afraid than you.”
I always reply, “Really? How can you say that when you have no freaking idea how scared I was?”
I had thought I had felt fear before, but there was nothing like having to backtrack over my own footprints because of a wrong turn and seeing mountain lion footprints over my own …
People do have that tendency to say the bear or the mountain lion was more afraid than you.
But I always intuit that what those animals really are thinking when they encounter us humans is “Yum!”
I’d heard of a bear being seen in Macon county, and took it with a grain of salt: But I just discovered one was identified on a trailcam placed in the hollow where I live, so I’m thinking from now on when I go for a walk out back my .357 goes with me.
I have hiked thousands of miles in our local mountains but gave it up years ago. I only go now with someone who is carrying. When I’m joking I add “or someone I can outrun”. But I predict there’s going to be a tragedy in my little neck of the woods so I don’t joke about things like that anymore
Judge orders man who hand fed bear, a timbit. (A Tim Horton’s “Donut Hole” kinda thing) to stay 50 Meters away from bears , and fined $2000. You know you’re some kind of special when you need a judge to tell you to stay 50 Meters away from a bear.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5824473/bc-man-fined-timbit-bear/
That’s my hard minimum, and I don’t even have a court order.
Totally agree, A bear will have to work to get within 50 meters of me, and if I have Timbits – I don’t share with wildlife. Its not good for humans – who the food is designed for – I think it’ll be quite harmful to wildlife.
Did you mean “the holler” where you live?
We’ve got some here from up North.
I have treated a number of mountain lion attacks. In one case, just as I retired, the wife of a local oral surgeon was attacked and saved by a companion and a passerby. When she was in the OR prep room waiting for surgery on her face, her husband was allowed to see her as he was on the staff. When he saw her face, he fainted.
The Sheriff helicopter was looking for the lion, when it found a second victim. He had been fixing the chain on his mountain bike when attacked and killed. The lion had eaten his liver.
We had something similar here in Orange County CA. A mountain lion dropped onto the head of a biker – her friend grabbed her by the ankles and pulled. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of plastic surgery on her face and head. I’ve seen the scars on her legs from her friend’s fingernails
When hunting the lion they found a second victim. The lion had actually hid the dead body.
Don’t tell me I’m “more afraid than they are”. They terrify me.
Ya sure? Any fava beans found in the vicinity?
Same case. I had retired by the time this one occurred.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mountain-lion-attacks-kill-1-injure-1-Orange-2814215.php
Victim was the friend of a friend.
Small world
Any lion eating my liver is probably going to die of alcohol poisoning.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5828898/black-bear-bowness-calgary/
That wild animals were once afraid of us might be true. But as my husband says, they seem to have noticed we are no longer carrying with us those big boom sticks
Their behavior has definitely changed – who ever heard of a lion killing someone, hiding the body, then attacking again? Too much creepy planning.
reminds me of that movie the Ghost and The Darkness.
Ghost in the darkness is one of my all time feel-good movies.
I thought Ghost in the Darkness was that Michael Douglas movie about the two killer lions.
The Ghost and the Darkness.
My bad. The Ghost And The Darkness. I am with my granddaughters this weekend and my glasses are seldom where I am