BREAKING NEWS: Bear in the house and we lived to tell the tale

Red Meat For Mushy Moderates

American black bear in Parc Omega, Quebec -Wikipedia

A public service announcement from yours truly: If you live in the Berkshires or Northwest Connecticut, be even more careful of bears than you usually are.

I was in the upstairs office in my Lakeville, Connecticut, home finishing up yesterday’s Substack column on the Trump CNN town hall and had just clicked “send” to push the column out to my subscribers when I heard a banging noise. There is currently a fair amount of home improvement construction going on in my neighborhood, so I didn’t think much of the noise.

Then I heard a second much louder racket, and I knew someone or some “thing” was in the house. I bounded down the stairs and noticed that the kitchen garbage can was missing. I then peered around the corner at our back deck. A mother and her cub were on that deck, pawing through the garbage can trying to scrape together a meal.

I stuck my head out the screen door and growled at them. The cub scampered away and climbed up a nearby crabapple tree. The mother just looked up at me, as if to say, “WTF are you doing here?” So if I was going to scare her away (which I very much wanted to do), I would need to charge her.

I went into the basement and grabbed a jug of bleach (they hate the smell and if the sow came at me, I could dowse her with it). I came back up the stairs, removed the cap and charged at the bear. She moved off the deck and retreated to the vicinity of the crabapple tree. In defense of her large cub (probably a yearling) the beast started to growl, hiss and huff at me.

At that point, I placed the jug of bleach on the deck between the mother and me. Then I started to tidy up. Anyone who happened across my back yard would have been treated to the bizarre spectacle of a 66-year-old man pawing at garbage strewn by a pair of bears who were patiently watching him clean up their mess from only 20 feet away. Then I brought the garbage can inside and closed and locked the sliding glass door.

I am grateful that the mother bear had grabbed the garbage can and hauled it out onto the deck. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had been forced to confront her and the yearling in my kitchen.

I was also struck by the fact that black bears are now so well trained to hunt for garbage that these two didn’t even bother with the actual food they had access to in my kitchen: there was fresh fruit in a bowl on the counter; there were crackers, breakfast cereals and bags of chips in the pantry. And, of course, the refrigerator would have been a treasure trove of goodies (I’m told seasoned ursine garbage hunters do know how to open them).

A similar incident just occurred in the Berkshires at the home of my friend Jamie Higgins. Fortunately for Jamie, she has a dog!

I was alone when the incident happened. When my wife came home from work, I told her about it. Needless to say, she was very upset, and for good reason. This could have been much, much worse. As it turned out, our sliding screen door wasn’t even harmed. Evidently, the mother simply opened it with her paw, the same way I do whenever I go out to the deck. There was some minor debris in the kitchen that I quickly cleaned up. Even the kitchen garbage can was scuffed but otherwise unscathed.

The lesson is quite clear: this time of year, when bears are extremely active, never leave an outside door or first-floor window open with only a screen standing between you and nature. It could get ugly and chances are pretty good you won’t be as lucky as we were.