Though I never gave much or any thought to to ever possibly seeing a bear anywhere around our house, I had heard from some people, including my sister, stories about bears lumbering near or through their yards, in the past.
Well,yesterday, it was finally my time to witness a bear taking a shortcut through our yard to its next destination. Here’s how it happened:
I was taking our dog Buddy for a walk up our road when I came across one of my neighbors, Earl, working in his yard. We had just said hi to one another and, suddenly, I heard Earl say, “Look, look at that bear crossing the road!” I turned quickly and managed to catch a quick glimpse of the bear scampering up the hill in what I believe was our front yard. What a sight that was and though it was more of a blur than anything else, I was glad that I was a few houses away from our house when Smokey appeared.
When the dog and I got back to the house, nothing was opened, broken or stomped upon, nor was the small gate door leading to our backyard left open or ripped off of its hinges. This would tell me one of two things: either this was a bear with good manners who closed the gate behind him or he just hurdled it. My guess would be the latter.
Like I’ve said, it wasn’t as if I had a clear view of this bear but knowing that what I had just sort of witnessed wasn’t totally unheard of in Thomaston was pretty cool to me. After all, a bear is a mammal that most people will only ever see at a zoo.
I’m going to assume that I won’t see anything like that again, but even one time was a pretty cool experience.