I was shocked when I saw it and thought I was mistaken when I first spotted it, but nope, it was definitely a bear. 😱 In all the time my family has lived here, there was only one other time when a family member (my mother) claimed that she saw a bear in the back yard. She was beginning to show some signs of age-related dementia as well as some eyesight issues, so we were never sure of her report. However, now I am convinced that she might have been correct.
Immediately after the sighting and my snapping this pic for proof, I called one of my neighbors to alert her of the visitor. She spends a good bit of time outdoors doing work in her yard, and she often keeps her garage door open for hours at a time, too. I did not want her to become an appetizer for a hungry bear. She told me she had been out walking through the neighborhood earlier in the evening and had seen the bear from a distance (one-quarter mile from here), so she called someone to come and give her a ride.
The beastie remained on all-fours as s/he wandered through the yard. If I had been standing beside the bear, I imagine the ridge of its back would have been about waist-high on me. Upon reaching the opposite diagonal-corner of the property, it turned and wandered back, then took an alternate route back towards the corner from which it came and disappeared into a sparsely-wooded area.
screenshot from Google Maps
A few miles away from here, I would not have been as surprised where true "country" landscape reigns and thick woods are common. Bears are also known to frequently be seen in the mountains, just 20 minutes away. But here, at the liminal area between suburbs and country, I was quite surprised. And it is making me re-think the compost heap out back.
SOURCES
1 Wikipedia: American Black Bear
03-Sep-2019
