Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Steve’s Country Cabin Journal #1.
Hello everyone and welcome to our new series! Most of what I write about in this series will be stories from my past and will feature many different true tales. Some will be short, others a bit longer, but I hope you will enjoy them all. And sometimes some more recent stories will be added in, like today. So off we go with our first post…
The night before last I had forgotten to bring in my two bird feeders for the night. That’s a must or the raccoons get at them and break them trying to get at the seeds. It was nearly 9pm and dark. I turn on the light and look around before going out. All clear. Out I go. I’m just unhooking the first feeder when I hear a strange sound. But a familiar sound. A sound that said “Steve, you don’t want to be out here”. I looked around. That strange feeling of being watched hit me. But I still needed that other feeder. I just got it unhooked when a crashing in the raspberry patch below me revealed something large…a bear! Fortunately he was going away from the steps and I came back inside, um, rather quickly. Note to Steve, “bring in feeders while it’s still daylight”. At least it wasn’t that huge bear that was around here last year. I would say this one was about 400 pounds. Still too big. This is the worst time of year for bears coming into town. They want food. And lots of it. It will soon be time for them to enter hibernation and they want to be as fat as possible. Normally they won’t attack people. But if there is a cub nearby, that can change things. If they are hurt, that can change things. Suddenly scaring them can change things. Two people this year were killed by bears. Not a lot perhaps, but I wouldn’t want to be one of them.
This reminded me of a time out at the cottage. There was a lot of bears out there and I was often out there alone. I was staying in a small “guest cottage”, at least it would be once the main cottage was built. It was a nice cozy little place. But one thing I did every morning before going outside was to look out each window, there was one on each wall, to make sure there was no bear hanging around for me to meet. This one morning I did that and all was clear. Out I went onto the steps and closed the doors behind me. I guess that sound got the attention of a bear behind my car. He came around the car and spotted me. I saw him too and immediately began to slowly open the first door. The bear came running at me! So I moved faster and just got inside and closed the inside door and the bear was at the door standing up against it. I’m glad it was a very solid wood door with only 3 small windows. He stayed there for a bit then got down and wandered off into the trees. I will admit, that was a bit too close for me. Not sure why he ran at me though.
There was other bear experiences out there too which I will write about another time. Well, I hope you enjoyed this first post in our new series. Have a wonderful day everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
Daily Pics #261.
Good morning to all of you! It is a cool, cloudy and wet morning here once again and the wind is just beginning to blow. That wind makes it feel even colder. The remaining summer birds are leaving now. Large flocks of geese heading south. Juncos coming in from the north to spend some time with us before heading further south. Probably half of the white-throated sparrows are gone now. Less than a third of the purple finches remain. The goldfinches are all gone but some pine siskins have come back to replace them. The chickadees are here for the winter, a white-breasted nuthatch has joined them and all 10 of my blue jays are here now for the winter. The northern sparrows should be showing up very soon to spend a week or two with us before heading south. Then there is Theodore. He’s my friendly wild turkey that keeps coming around. He’s getting quite tame. I think someone else in the neighborhood is trying to make friends with him too. I can now get him to come right up to me, with the aid of peanuts, but he won’t yet take them from my hand. But I keep hoping.
Just like I’m trying to get the blue jays to take peanuts from my hand. With them it will just take one to start doing so and the others will follow quickly enough. I think the chipmunks will disappear this week, it’s getting kind of cold for them, and they likely have enough food to carry them through the winter. Maybe 2 winters. They have been hauling away a lot of peanuts. Jasper has finished hauling away the walnuts now, though there might still be one or two up in the tree hiding among the leaves. Speaking of leaves, they have really been falling the last couple of days. So many trees are now bare completely, yet there are still a few that are totally green. Kind of interesting how that works. Back to Jasper. Though he has finished with the walnuts he hasn’t come back for peanuts, except to get one or two each day for a quick snack. Maybe he has found food elsewhere without those chipmunks to fight with all the time? Time will tell I guess. Hmm, the clouds are breaking up and blue sky is moving in. Maybe we will get some sunshine today after all. That would be nice.
The featured image shows some more of our fall foliage at Rabbit Lake. And the photo above is Baxter the blue jay sitting beside me saying, “peanut please”. I hope you all have a fabulous Tuesday and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 