~ A Thief in the night...........

My telephone rang at 5:30 a.m. this morning. I just knew it was my Mom who lives across the drive and my greeting was "WHAT'S THE MATTER?".....she never, ever calls me that early nor does anyone else unless something is wrong.

She had an intruder last night. Sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. A bear decided it had been hibernating long enough and it was hungry! My Mom has been a friend of the birds for as many years as I can remember and has many, many feeders out for them. Not anymore. This guy ripped down all her feeders, carried off her biggest one and ripped the big wooden feeders right off their posts. She had a small metal garbage can on her porch filled with seed that it proceeded to roll off on the ground and consume 90% of the bird seed. It was a very quiet bear - my dogs didn't hear a thing. Neither of them barked and Banjo was outside on the front porch.

This is a black bear - native to Maine and becoming more common in rural areas. We have never had one on the farm in all the years we have lived here. Now that they are coming out of hibernation they are looking for protein. Blackoil sunflower seed is full of it and they love it. The bear that was here consumed about 20lbs of seed.

We followed it's trail beyond the house into the back pasture where the sand was soft. It was easy to see his prints. Jacob followed his tracks to the edge of the pasture towards the woods.

It left enough sign behind that it was here and what it ate. I hate that my Mom cannot feed the birds. She enjoys that so much. The advise we received from the Pro's is to take down all our feeders and leave them down for a week. If the bear comes back and their is no food supply, it's likely it won't return again. We have done as they suggested and are keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn't return.