A wild adventure with a sad ending.

We had two bears in the house tonight. That's right - IN the house. Ellen and I were upstairs in the TV bedroom. First we heard a noise outside. Then the screen door banging. Then noises downstairs in the kitchen. BIG noises! Ellen glanced out the window and saw a bear climbing up the bank behind the house. So there was no way we were going to go down to investigate. We closed the bedroom door and I called 911. I was eventually connected with a game warden and I explained our situation. He was in Townshend. A half-hour away. He said he would come right away. That was a long half-hour! We could hear noises the whole time. We assumed it was a bear, but we didn't know there were two. The one Ellen saw must have come back. From the noises, it was pretty clear they had gotten into food - we could hear them rustling packages. There was some thumping we couldn't easily explain, but later we saw they had opened a plastic container we keep cereal in. Eventually the game warden called again - he was outside. I described the house to make sure he was in the right place. He was. I told him about the back door. He came around. He saw that there were two bears in the kitchen. He called out and amazingly, they came out. But then we heard a gunshot. Then a second. Then a bear moaning. Then a third shot. Then silence. He called up to us to see if we were all right. Then he came in - and warned us that they had made a mess in the kitchen. He had killed one bear but missed the second and it got away. We came down and indeed, there was a mess:

Bear work! They ignored the peaches, bananas, cabbage and tomato on the counter and went for the flour and cereal in the pantry, and the compost under the counter. Pretty soon our neighbors, Zach and Phil showed up. They had heard gunshots and came up to see if we were ok. Phil is a cop in Springfield and recognized the game warden. They were amazed when they heard what had happened.

Phil and Zach talking with the game warden (looking down from the deck).****************** The warden said that bear incidents had become very common. They have increased ten-fold in the ten years he has been a game warden. But he had not known of an incident in which the bear(s) were still in the house when the warden arrived! I expressed sorrow over the bear having to be killed, and he said he was sorry, but that was policy toward bears that break into houses. But I have now killed a deer with my car and been the occasion for the death of a bear who came into my house! This is so sad! Why is this happening? ********** I have actually imagined having a bear come into the house. A raccoon got in years ago, and I have lain in bed and imagined a bear getting in. I have wondered what I would do if one did? We were fortunate, actually, to have both been upstairs and have a cell phone handy when it happened. Our bedroom is right by the back door. What if we had awakened to a bear in the bedroom? No more sleeping with the back door open, I guess. The wooden screen door is no protection, though if we had a metal door with bars over the screen, that would be okay, I guess. And Oh Yes- the bears pulled the screening off the door, and while we waited for the warden, the house filled up with mosquitoes. They are all around me as I write. I guess I could have gone out and taken a picture of the dead bear, but I didn't want to. I am so sorry that he is dead. He was just doing what bears do naturally. I'm really the interloper. It's amazing that I've lived in this house for fifty years, and this is the first time a bear has tried to come into the house. We've always had bears around. They carried our compost bin off into the woods years ago, and we stopped keeping compost outside. We knew that there were bears around recently - the cart under the deck had been tipped over a couple of days ago - - only a bear could have done that. And A bag of groceries Ellen had left outside had been torn open - a raccoon could have done that, but it was probably a bear. So we knew they were around, but we didn't expect them to come inside while we were here! The warden suggested that the bear population has increased significantly, and they are also being driven out of their habitat by human activity. Just a couple of weeks ago, Jill Lepore wrote a long essay in the New Yorker about bear-human interaction, titled, The North American Bear Boom. So we are part of a larger story, but not in the way I would have chosen to be. I am so sorry, Mr. Bear!