More Bears and some pictures

...but not of the bears.

Last Sunday morning as I took a load of mixed paper down to the garage for recycling, I stopped on our first set of steps, before I got to the landing. Even without my glasses, I saw some movement in the bushes near our neighbor's house, about 20 yards away. Actually, it looked like there was something under their house. My first thought was, "I didn't know they had chickens! Do they have chickens? Black chickens? They must only have laying hens since I've never heard any cock-a-doodle-dooing. I should ask them about eggs. And chickens." (I think really fast...)

Then I realized that the "chicken" was much larger than a chicken. I thought, "What is Dale doing under his house this early in the morning? Was there some wind last night? Did a tree fall? I wonder if there was flooding? Wait, Dale doesn't get up this early."

That's when a very large, very fluffy, very sleekly black, shiny bear came out of the brush and stood in Dale's driveway, broadside to me, paused in silouette in the sun, with his breath puffing out into crisp morning air. It was a beautiful sight to behold. He was magnificent.

When I slowly eased backward up the stairs through the door and said softly, "Bear.", Greg came bounding out with his slingshot and a fist-full of lead balls, with wild-eyed excitement.

My Kodak moment was over.

These are shots of a bear from a few months ago. We saw him several times in the same spot eating lots of grass and greens, while on the way home from fishing. He was usually right by the road and never seemed too leery of strangers.

But wait!

There's more!

This morning, we were up early to take Greg to the airport for his hunting trip (Elk. Wyoming. Yum.), we encountered THIS:

PS: This is the neighbor's trash in our garage, so don't jump to any conclusions about those beer bottles, thank you very much. Go ahead and razz me about all the miscellaneous junk those - that's all mine!