The O-Zone

There are benefits to having a bear problem. Just ask this guy.

We have a good sized black bear who simply won’t take no for an answer when it comes to the plum and pear trees next to the house.

Middle of last week, Dan pissed this particular bear off by shooting him in the butt with the bb-gun.  The bear swapped ends and wuffed at Dan.  Dan should have wuffed back!!  Instead, he took another shot at the bear with the bb-gun and that time it worked, and the bear left the vicinity.  Just not for long.

Terry is on high bear alert.  She sees a black ear peep up over the grass and she screams bloody murder.  Hard on the hearing if you happen to be in the sunroom when she does that.  Poor Mishkin ducks and runs for cover a lot.

A couple of days ago, Dan got fed up with it all and when the bear was in the top of the plum tree, Dan shot over his head with a .41 mag pistol, and then again right behind him after he was out of the tree (that only took a few seconds as the bear can evidently climb down as fast as up), and was racing through the aspens.  Mish did NOT appreciate the entire episode.  The neighbors are also having bear issues, so I’m sure they knew what those two shots meant!!  They probably wish we’d shot him instead of simply relocating him to their yards instead of ours.

Terry’s comment about the whole thing was “ooooooooooooo.”  Oro didn’t say a peep, just got skinny and stood up tall.

Since then, the bear is back to being skittish, which is a GOOD thing, and simply yelling at him gets him to leave the yard, but he does come back a couple of hours later, usually.

The chipmunks rejoice.

Next year we’re going to remove both trees.  Having them so close to the house was actually moronic on the part of the guy who built this place.  They just hadn’t been producing that much fruit so we’ve been putting up with the bears and deer since the harvesting only lasted a night or two.  This has been going on for weeks now due to bountiful rain in the spring when the trees were setting fruit.    I guess we’ve had enough.  Too bad.  They are so pretty in the spring.

The weather has changed, and there’s even a chance of rain in the forecast for several days this week.  Supposed to be temperatures in the low 60’s or even the 50’s for most of this week.

Since we are still without any firewood deliveries, yesterday we drove the Ranger up the hill where we did thinning a couple of years ago, and we collected some of the small trees which were piled up to dry out.  It takes an amazingly long time for green trees to dry enough to be good for firewood.  The electric chainsaw works great!  We really should collect all the rest of that firewood and put it under cover.  Maybe we will start doing that this next weekend.

We collected enough to fill the firewood rack on the porch (so about 1/5 of a cord), in just a few minutes, and this morning Dan started a cookstove fire, and I fixed breakfast on it.

Also yesterday we took care of some other outside chores, including harvesting the rest of the potatoes and onions which are now laying out on a tarp in the garage to dry off.  We’ll move them into the pantry in a day or two.

Getting ready for company – Cassandra arrives this evening for a few days visit.  Yay!