Another Bearable Claremont Day
A bear front-flipped over our fence and did a momentary handstand before backflipping, sticking a perfect landing, and disappearing into the canyon.
The sunset below is what I’m looking at as I write about what happened a few minutes ago, the bear acrobatics caught by security camera footage, but it all started this morning when a policeman rang my doorbell.
“There’s been a report of a bear in a swimming pool. I was wondering if I could take a look from your back patio and figure out which pool and where they are headed.”
We don’t have a pool but our back patio thrusts into a curve in the canyon, so this is probably a good time to remind my downhill neighbors they may want to think twice about skinny-dipping, given that we can see several of their pools.
Well, the bear wasn’t there, but as the officer was leaving we got the call: the bear had gone uphill a block or two.
And that was the last I thought of it, knowing that if Fish and Wildlife had to be called with their stun guns, the bear would eventually be safely re-released, until I caught a glimpse of the bear acrobatics in the above triptych.
OMG, it happened so quickly I couldn’t reach for my camera phone, but even those gnarly security photos tell the story. Notice the bear isn’t very big. You can never be too careful, as a helicopter mama bear is often close behind.
Thank you, wildlife, for enriching our lives.
If you thought this story was unbearably precious and don’t need to pause, click the link to my previous post where an indignant old lady, who uses terrible puns, bosses a bear, and threatens to tell the HOA on Ms. Ursa if she doesn’t behave according to expectations. Open Letter to the California Black Bears.
I just finished Julia Phillips's book The Bear. It's a powerful and quiet book. A very different story from your lighthearted touch, which I appreciate. Check it out!
Bears are beautiful but scary. We went for an airbnb vacation in Glenwood Springs, Colorado a few summers ago. We saw big piles of gooey messes on the ground-- right in the middle of the street. I thought it might be bear scat and one of our neighbors confirmed it. They called one of them Boo-Boo. Later that day day, we saw Boo-Boo, the young black bear abandoned by his mom, up in a tree across the street from where we were staying. It was scary. But also comical. there was someone on the ground who was trying to get him out of the tree... and off his property. Boo-Boo would just climb higher...