miltonct.com

Hi all,

It’s happened again. Quite spectacular, really. Less than forty minutes ago, at 9:00 a.m. straight up (too much in daylight for my money), this big black bear came running up our side lawn while we were having coffee on the deck. Beautiful creature, pretty young, I think, but 350-400 pounds if he was an ounce.

I told Holly to run for the camera and our speed was rewarded. I got several shots, but one is really good. If I can figure out how to send a picture to the Milton site, I’ll show it. I have to go over Chris’s directions on how to do that, again.

We called the State and they took a report for a sighting. We did not take our feeders in, since the noise of our fascination with the animal while we were on the deck probably scared the critter off.

We were amazed at how fast that big animal could lope along and he wasn’t even trying. Couldn’t hope to outrun him if it came to that. Someone (I hope it wasn’t a sidewalk bear expert) told me that if you make a ot of noise it will run. We didn’t have to, today, but the feeders are coming in at night on a regular basis. Hopefully that will be enough.

As an aside: How about some activity from others on the site? This is a neat thing that Chris Majeske Has wrought and we should be using it.

I’ll send the pic if I can set up the program, so all can see.

Dick

We thought having a skunk in the yard was cute. He didn’t bother anybody and who cares about the birdseed at the bottom of the feeder, anyway. A few days ago he moved on. He’s not moving any more. Run over by a car. No doubt it was him. Shortly after the body disappeared. Life goes on.

Incidentally, the stuff we put on the hostas recently seems to have kept them away. Supposed to be good for thirty days. Been a couple of weeks now.

Dick

What beautiful creatures! Lithe, graceful, filled to bursting with fluid movement, they live in the dark woods and bother no one. People, that is. But Hostas? They are a delicacy. Finally, with but one small change to our household this season, the deer population have discovered the Hosta people. Who would have thought a thirty-five pound ball of fur could have made the difference? But he did. Maxx died last year and since then our Hostas have become – as they say – fair game.

Well, if we can discourage them until mid-August without them making too much trouble, I guess they can eat all they want. It’ll save me some later labor.

Within the last week we’ve had two full grown females nibbling in the back yard and yesterday I saw one heading east in front of our place at a near gallop.

Oh, and Flower, our resident skunk, seems to have moved on. He was cute, but the upside is, he didn’t leave any odiferous residue as a going away present.

Dick and Holly

Thursday evening, June 1, 2006.

It finally happened to us. Years ago we’d seen evidence of bear – three broken feeders and paw marks on the siding. This time I was standing at the picture window gazing at a dusky, unlit scene – dusky because it was 7:15 p.m. and unlit because we were in the midst of our most current power failure, occasioned by a thunderstorm none of us will soon forget - and this blacker than black shape materialized. It came up from the road, across the lawn and made a bee-line for the thistle feeder in our front yard, 25 feet from our window.This black bear was in the 350-400 pound class. Holly has been wanting to see a bear for years (in the safety of the house). I called to her. She was ecstatic, went to the door and opened it to look. Just then the bear reached up and took the feeder in its paws.

She called out, “Don’t do that!”

The bear dropped to the ground, turned and looked at her. I joined her at the door. It was a beautiful creature. While it looked at us in the customary standoff, I said, “You heard her. Stay away from our feeders.”

Yon bear evidently decided she (I thought it was a she, somehow) had been sufficiently ganged up on, took off through the driveway hostas and headed toward the line of Scott Bennet and Tony Caretta’s place and disappeared.

After awhile, I went out and took in the feeders for the night.

Dick and Holly Benton

5:00 PM Wed. Bear up a tree and chased off by our Black Lab, Bullet. The
bear ran off toward Jane and Bill Ellis’s house and went across Saw Mill
into the woods. I worried that the bear would go after our dog but it was
the other way around.
Sandy Uhlein

After hearing a significant rustling in the woods and with a clear instinct that something large was there, I saw a black bear, mature, about 350 pounds, standing on all fours with its gaze fixed — on me. The bear offered nothing by way of expression or stance except a sense, I thought, of curiosity. At 50 yards distance, it occurred to me that staying still was the best response. So did the bear.

After waiting for one of us to do something, I went back about my walking, and so too the bear, though we both stopped to take a look at each other a few more times.

Litchfield, Milton Section, 8:00 PM on Sat May 1, 2006, about 100 yards west of the Shaepaug and about a half mile south of the Mlton Cemetary.

Anthhony Pangaro

A day after the vernal equinox, a Phoebe Flycatcher was seen and heard singing along the Shepaug River in Hubbard Pines on March 21.

Also a pair of Wood Ducks, 5 Common Mergansers, and a pair of Hooded Mergansers at different times from 3/21 – 3/24.

Posted by Kristine Wallstrom.