Whose Place is this? (cont’d)

 

This encroacher, in July, gets the prize. Though, as it didn’t really encroach, I’d have to put in a different category. Its visit was more, well, just that—a visit.

I don’t know what made Paulson look out the window, but there it was, shuffling around in the sunshine.

Buster was lolling on the porch. The bear would get him. Otherwise he’d be Algy. In a panic, quietly as we could manage, we let him in. Dumbest dog ever. No clue. He padded along when we rushed to other windows, unable to see out, himself. We kept snapping our phones, jaws on the floor. We watched till it clambered to the top of the log pile, like in King of the Hill, and melted away.

 

My brother, himself a Baer, decreed it a young one, probably male. He said the ears on an older bear are smaller relative to the body. A bear must grow into its ears. Also, Paulson claims this one’s gone gone. He says it was just passing through, moving from one mountain ridge to the next. He says that’s what bears do. I might as well believe him.

You know the poem. Algy met a bear. A bear met Algy. The bear was bulgy. The bulge was Algy. As ours was no grizzly, a more apt story might be the one below. (I can’t find our copy, waaa.) It really happened. That bear wasn’t fencing off its food, banging on snakes, holding hens hostage in its car. Of all the frightening possibilities, we’d best lay our worst fears and worries upon ourselves.