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BMN Bear, right not beer, bear

Filed Under : Brian's Morning Newsletter by admin

Jun.7,2010

Brian's Morning Newsletter

Monday, June 7th 2010

I woke this morning to the sound of what I thought was dogs or possibly coyotes in the trash cans Nell and I retrieved from the woods yesterday. That was about 3:30AM. I didn't see any coyote as I poked my head out our back door, but something really large made a frighted grunt and took off into the darkness. Shit, that was a bear! Hmm, I tried to go back to sleep, but even after closing the front security screen as I had just let our dog out and back in, and the front door had been wide open, returning to dream-land wasn't happening.

I switched on my desktop PC and tried in vain again for an hour or more to make Flash movies and Youtube videos work on my site. Frustrated, I guess I forgot about pesky bear until dawn, when I noticed out our north facing window the compost barrel spilled over in the garden. "Damn bear," I thought, " that's what you knocked over, I thought is was the trash cans, but they were empty, and upright when I stuck my head out the back door."

Once the dawn lit things up a little I went around the front of the house and saw what the bear was up to, and why he made enough noise to wake me up; knucklehead had pulled the 30 gallon WVO barrel over, probably on himself, but definitely spilled it all over the shed. WVO isn't terribly toxic to the ground, but I don't think the trees next to the bio-shed like having the soil soaked in any type of oil, especially since oil sheds the water trees need.

I decided that since I was totally unable to get Flash video to work, I ought to shift gears and use our crappy-old camera to shoot something new for this morning's newsletter. Obviously, I had to get a shot of the bio-shed mayhem. I wasn't out there five seconds when I saw something freaky-huge, and brown moving around just to the other side of our garage. My neck hairs crackled a bit, but I stepped closer to the large Black Bear anyway. It was equally unafraid, and that's a bad thing. I thought about slowly backing away, but it was still 100 feet away and I was sure that had I made the decision to run for one of my rifles, he would lose the encounter, badly.

As I tried to get one more image, the only thing our visual contact appeared to cause as far as emotion in this animal was it defiantly pissed on a shrub, then moved away. It was early and I had the flash bulb enabled, so I don't know if that helped or hindered, frankly I was relieved as well when it went away.

I bet you never saw a bear piss in the woods, although, I know you know they do.
Yeah, this is not a cute little bear, this needs to be dealt with now. I will call the game warden this morning at 8:00 and find out what to do.

This is a big bear, and it isn't afraid to get right up next to the house. I love nature, but the bear has to go, before he hurts someone.

I have been calling around, even talked to the State Police but it seems I will need to wait until 8:00 AM to contact the NE NM office of Game and Fish, well at least the Las Vegas Ranger station answered the phone at 7:30AM.

I walked around our yard with our SK rifle and saw where this big bear has absconded with two five gallon plastic containers of WVO and chewed them open, grotesquely eating the contents, I assume, yuk. Look at the bear in the above image standing there defiantly. My god, to think it has a gut full of grease, double-yucky and freaky-scary.

All right, I just spoke with the regional game officer and he is going to meet me this afternoon in town and provide us with rubber bullets for a 12 gauge shotgun as a deterrent. Yeah that puts perspective on what deters a bear, 12 gauge rubber bullets.

The officer asked if food was left out which enticed the bear? Well yes, if used vegetable oil can be considered food, gross. I mentioned that the bear already had gotten into a bag of trash that someone left back in the Tusas main kitchen campsite. Nell and I found cans of evaporated milk with big teeth marks, and virtually every5thing which wasn't removed, was opened and spread about, including ground coffee, flour, some virgin olive oil, yeah that there was the beginning of our fatty's craving for grease.
Then day before yesterday he got into the chicken feed next door at my parent's, and knocked it around.