Yesterday
afternoon, I had an Alaskan experience that was 1/3 scary, 1/3
ridiculous, and 1/3 painful!
After
the noisy, hot, sweaty work of weed whacking back by our power tower
for more than an hour, I took a break with a big glass of ice tea and
a book on the front porch, to cool down in the breeze wafting over
the lake and enjoy the silence.
In
the woods to my right, a loud “crack” in the trees attracted my
attention, so I looked into the upper reaches, thinking that perhaps
a porcupine, which we have seen there before, had crawled out onto a
weak branch. Seeing no movement, I returned to my book.
A
minute later, I glanced right, riveted by the sight of a big, adult
brown bear (grizzly) sniffing in my garden, 20 feet from the porch!
We have seen small black bears in the yard before (200 lbs),
but the larger and more aggressive brown bears tend to “own” the nearby creeks, filled with
salmon, grayling, and trout. They cede the more limited appeals of
our property – until now. Whether the bear was a boar or a sow, I
don't know, but at close proximity, I could see that each of “his”
padded feet was the size of a dinner plate, and the round head was as
wide as a basketball hoop. He looked hale, hearty and big, more than
twice as large as any black bear I had seen up close before. What
astonished me, given the size, was his stealthy silence. Had I not
heard him break a branch in transit, and sensed movement in my
peripheral vision, I would not have noticed his nearby presence at
all.