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UP in Michigan
It's not the bears you have to worry about
The first bear usually shows up around 8 p.m. He has a white V on his black chest, so the locals call him Victor. He got into a bad fight a couple weeks ago: walks with a limp, has a bunch of patches of fur missing. I'm told he weighs about 250 pounds, and I believe it. He's usually trying to get a head start on the other bear, who weighs over 300 pounds and who, judging by his own exposed swaths of skin, was on the other, winning side of the battle. I don't know this bear's name; people just call him big. When the second bear sees Victor, he charges. My husband says this is a fake charge, meant to scare. If the big bear were charging me, I would run.
The funny thing is, once you've seen these bears walk through your backyard every day for a few days, you stop being scared. After all, they're only black bears: herbivores, not people killers. I mean, I'm not going to be like Jim, the guy who lives behind us, who walks up to the bears and hands them scraps. Jim leaves food out every night. He even has rigged up various treats for the bears – I don't know if they're honey pots or salt licks or what – so that the bears stand up on their hind legs and lick from a post, and sit on his couch, and generally make themselves at home around his fire pit. Then they make their way down the street, to the other guy who feeds them. Or they cross the street and rummage through the restaurant's dumpster down the hill.
We're walking down the road back to the house from Lake Superior, and the big bear walks out of the bushes 25 feet ahead. He looks at us, mostly at our Yorkshire Terrier; he seems far more scared of little Otis than Otis seems of him. Then he walks on by.
The funny thing is, once you've seen these bears walk through your backyard every day for a few days, you stop being scared. After all, they're only black bears: herbivores, not people killers. I mean, I'm not going to be like Jim, the guy who lives behind us, who walks up to the bears and hands them scraps. Jim leaves food out every night. He even has rigged up various treats for the bears – I don't know if they're honey pots or salt licks or what – so that the bears stand up on their hind legs and lick from a post, and sit on his couch, and generally make themselves at home around his fire pit. Then they make their way down the street, to the other guy who feeds them. Or they cross the street and rummage through the restaurant's dumpster down the hill.
We're walking down the road back to the house from Lake Superior, and the big bear walks out of the bushes 25 feet ahead. He looks at us, mostly at our Yorkshire Terrier; he seems far more scared of little Otis than Otis seems of him. Then he walks on by.
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