honestly though, (bears).

So, the whole bears-in-the-yard thing has been a real emotional roller coaster. You can glean all of this by psychoanalyzing my tone in past posts (I mean, if you want...?) but I've gone through a real process with my enthusiasm/non-enthusiasm for these bears. It's like its own several-step grieving process. 

 1. Excitement! Garbage has been strewn all over the driveway and I am frankly giddy over it (I am also not the one who has to clean up the garbage. Thanks, Garret!) and I am oddly defensive when anyone suggests that since I did not see a bear throw the garbage everywhere, it could technically be something else.  I'm all like, "Um, no, it's totally a bear..."  

2.  Mystified!  When one night we are sitting on our deck and the bear actually ambles up to the driveway, silently, I am wide-eyed and amazed to be seeing such a giant, awesome creature.  (I am also a little like "HAH! Told you so, naysayers!") 

3.  "Oh, again?"  Once I saw the bear in person, I was rather immediately of the attitude that, alright, we've done this.  Go away now, bear.  

4.  "WHAT?!"  When a bear shows up at 11am and I have to call the Sheriff because I can hear children playing down the hill, I am definitely getting a bit eye-rolly toward bears. 

5.  "OH COME ON. GO AWAY." When, a week later, it's nighttime and Garret and I are enjoying a glass of wine on the deck, and a bear helps herself to our garbage as though we invited her over but didn't provide her with dinner, I'm very over the bears.  Especially when we yell at her to go away and she basically just looks at us like, "Oh, please."  

6.  "When does hibernation start?" A bear ripped our garbage box apart the other day.  We're awaiting a new one.

We have been in touch with the police station a few times, and they put in word to the warden about little miss steals-the-garbage.  At the beginning of my apparent six-step process, I thought this was just kind of a cute fun thing that would be a one-time experience.  By step 5 when we were literally shining lights at a bear and yelling at it and it wasn't even blinking an eye, I was very concerned.  They're supposed to be afraid of people and when they're not, it's problematic.

We haven't seen her in a while, nor does she have any garbage to get from us anymore since our box is destroyed.  From what I can tell from research, bears typically prowl a fairly large radius, and they're solitary within that radius.  So it's possible she's over in another neighborhood and maybe the warden has actually gotten her and we don't know about it.

Then again, there's always the good chance I'll go outside on any given day and she'll just be lounging in a chair in my front yard, sipping lemonade and getting a suntan.