This morning as I was leaving the house, my boss was just driving away from HQ next door. She waved and called hi, then headed out. A minute later when I drove out, I saw that she had pulled over to the side of the road, near the beach. I thought maybe she had remembered something she wanted to tell me, so I stopped - and she pointed out the large pile of bear scat in the middle of the road!
There is a healthy population of black bears in this area, but although I've heard people tell about a few sightings this summer I haven't seen any. They're not habituated to getting food from people, and black bears are 'fraidy-cats in general - if they hear you coming they're more likely to run away than anything else. So you're just as likely not to see them. But this! This was close! This was only a few hundred yards from my house! With all the blueberries growing around it! Which bears love to eat! My harvest may be curtailed...
This evening, two of my housemates said they had seen the bear, at two different times, in about the same area - along a stretch of Sand Point Road that is lined with thimbleberry bushes. (Thimbleberries are similar to raspberries.) I hadn't realized those berries had started to ripen, but apparently they're enough to keep this bear in the same area throughout the day!
I will now be looking out the windows first thing in the morning... and before I go outside to go to work!
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