Scaring away the bears (7/23/03)

If you check in some of the old Jay County histories, you’ll find an account of “the last deer killed in the county.”

Anyone who reads the traffic reports knows that the deer population has made an enormous comeback since that “last” one was killed in the 19th century.

And the deer aren’t the only wildlife that appear to be flourishing.

Heading out on a two-week vacation, we spotted our first wild turkey only about two miles north of Portland. By the time we rolled back into the driveway Sunday night, we’d seen almost a dozen of them from here to New Hampshire.

An unofficial tally for the trip shows something like 15 deer, maybe more, including a fawn which Connie and I encountered on the path down from the cabin to the lake.

Add to that several great blue heron and numerous groundhogs, including one particularly pensive guy who was standing at the side of a busy highway, apparently contemplating suicide.

But it was the bear that made this an especially memorable trip from a wildlife standpoint.

The cabin, which we’ve visited nearly every summer of our married life, was built by Connie’s great-aunt in 1913 and has been in her family ever since. It’s a pretty rustic place, by any standard. There’s just one bedroom, but there’s a loft and a couple of sleeping porches.

My daughter is always quick to remind me that it’s small enough that she can clearly hear my snoring at night, even though I’m in the bedroom and she’s in the loft.

The cabin stands on a wooded hillside above a lake in the Monadnock region of southern New Hampshire; and even though there are other cabins on the hill, it’s a pretty sparsely populated part of the planet.

That thought came back to me about the middle of our stay.

I’d awakened about 2:30 or 3 a.m. to the sound of what I took at first to be an owl, though it wasn’t an owl I’d ever heard before.

It made a much more guttural sound, sort of a “ruh-ruh-rur-ruarrr” that was repeated with some regularity for about half an hour.

Flatlander that I am, I didn’t think much about it until the next afternoon when we were down at the lake.

“Did you hear the bear last night?” said one of the other residents of the hill.

“Is that what that was?” I answered.

Sure enough, I was informed, it was a bear. Several hill residents had heard it that night, and when informed of what it sounded like, Sally said she’d heard that same noise when we first arrived.

Now, I don’t know about you, but bears aren’t something this Hoosier boy has had a lot of experience with. All I know is the idea of being eaten — or even appearing appetizing — is something I’m not comfortable about.

So we bolted the door that night, just to be on the safe side. And we got an old baseball bat out of the closet, though no one was volunteering to take a swing if the need arose.

Instead, when we called it a night, we just listened more closely.

At breakfast, the all-clear was sounded.

No bear to be heard.

Apparently my snoring — which was especially melodious and creative that night, I’ve been told — chased the poor creature away.

I can just imagine how the noise must have been described to the other bears in the woods.[[In-content Ad]]