Watch Out For the Bears!

A couple of weeks ago a resident of Beech Mountain posted a picture of a bear in her yard. Since that time there have been numerous sightings of bears all over the mountain, both night and day.

During the last week we have had 4 visits from at least two different bears. The first night a huge bear (the head was at about a 4' height as he walked past our trash receptacle) cased out our trash receptacle and tried to open the lid but we have locking mechanisms on the fasteners so he was out of luck that night. The next two nights he was here again and on the second night he figured out if he sat beside the receptacle, put his feet against the side and pulled on the pickets he could bust them out. The result is this:



He pulled and bit and shoved until he managed to get a garbage bag out of the bin and carry it down into the yard where he proceeded to make quite a mess. The next day my daughter and I bagged the debris while my husband and son-in-law shored up the receptacle with more heavy duty wood. The next night he came back and it seems to work as he was not able to pry the new boards off.

Last night the entire house (and probably a couple of neighbors) were awoken to a terrific noise. We went to the window to see that a different bear had discovered that he, too, was not able to get into the receptacle so he took his frustration out by shoving the entire thing down into the yard. He rolled it over and over until it came to rest against a stump, about 20' from its original position, as shown in the following three pictures:

Now it will probably take all four of us to haul it back up into position and I guess we need to start thinking about how we can anchor it into position. Hmmmmmm.

At least we know the lids and locks work! They did not budge and the trash stayed put.

Today John Carrin (golf course head pro) told me that when he came to work this morning there were two bears in the middle of the road between the golf course and Buckeye Recreation Center.

If you have problems with keeping your trash in its receptacle and want to have the lids and locks (even a mailbox flag to let the collectors know if you have a pickup), contact me and I can get you a name of someone who does this work.