Last week, Cil and Jim reported seeing a grizzly bear in our driveway around 9:30pm when they were coming home from a dinner at our friends’ house. The bear ambled across the driveway and into the brush. Frankly, we were kind of bummed we didn’t get to see it.
Well, tonight Kyra and I had our opportunity. On our way to the lake we turned around the bend at our cherry orchard, and a medium-sized black bear darted across the driveway right in front of the car. I was amazed how fast she moved.
I say she because I’m pretty sure it was mama. When we came back from the lake about two hours later, coming up the driveway I saw motion in a tree ahead. There were two black bear cubs climbing the tree! We stopped so Kyra could lean out the window and take a picture. You can see the little tykes up near the top branches.
It was incredible how quickly they climbed. When we first spotted them, they were probably halfway up the trunk, and by the time Kyra took this picture they’d gained twenty feet. Here’s a grainy photo of the pair, courtesy of Kyra zooming my phone (I later told her you never use digital zoom on a camera).
Finally, to give a sense of how amazingly high these guys had gone, here’s a shot of the full height of the tree with the bears indicated by arrows:
I’m guessing mama wasn’t too far away, so we continued up the driveway. A few weeks ago, I kind of laughed when a friend suggested we take bear spray with us when we walk down our driveway to get the mail. I’m not laughing any more. I’m not sure I ever imagined living in a place where I might run into a bear while getting another form letter from Geico…