Our five acre home in Oregon backed up to a million acres of national forest lands. The Applegate River flowed by the front. It was an ideal location for wildlife viewing. Almost magical. We had front row seats. Usually, our wild visitors were a joy, but when cougars and bears stopped by, we rolled up the welcome mat.

One night Peggy and I woke up with a start as a deer leapt onto the deck next to our bedroom. They frequently crossed the deck, but rarely at night and never at full speed. It got our attention— but nothing like the loud thump that followed. I imagined something big and thought of getting up to look. But it was a moonless, pitch black night. I wouldn’t be able to see anything and the intruder would be long gone. Or not. I decided to go back to sleep.

Our neighbor, Bryan, called the next night. “I’m shaking, Curt,” he told me. A hawk had taken out a chicken of his during the day and he had gone out after dark to check on the welfare of the flock. What he found was a pair of eyes staring out at him from one side of a large tree. A long tail stretched out from the other side. Twitching. It was a cougar! Around 7 feet long. Bryan kept his bright flashlight focused on the eyes and slowly backed away to the safety of his house. And then called me.

Suddenly, the loud thump from the night before made sense. The cougar had been in hot pursuit of the deer and jumped onto our deck. About five feet away from where we were sleeping.

Bears came by much more frequently than cougars. They thought of our garbage can as a gourmet restaurant. They refused to make reservations— just show up, lift off the lid, and settle in for an a multi course meal. They were messy eaters (kind of like taking a two-year-old out to dinner), and never left a tip. It was a hassle, but it went with the territory. A quick 15 minutes afterwards would clean things up. Unless they ordered take out. Then their mess would be strewn out for 50 yards up the trail.

Another neighbor, Tom, suggested fastening the lid down with a bungie cord. I had my doubts— given my experience with Yosemite bears—but tried it and was pleasantly surprised. It actually worked (most of the time). It didn’t stop them from knocking the large plastic cans over and leaving claw marks behind.

Two bear encounters stood out.

The first one took place when our daughter, Tasha, visited with her two boys. The day of their arrival, I’d whipped up hamburgers on my Weber Grill that lived on our porch. Afterwards, we’d had a pleasant evening entertaining the boys and chatting. Finally, we had all drifted off to bed. Tasha had the guest room that was next to the porch, the boys occupied our office next to her (it converted to a bedroom on demand), and Peggy and I were in our bedroom at the other end of the house. Everyone was tired. Sleep came immediately. Until the crash…

The smell of the cooking hamburgers had wafted up into the forest that evening and got the attention of a hungry bear. I’m pretty sure that it was sitting up on the edge of the national forest thinking, “Damn, why don’t they go to bed.” We were all sleeping happily when he came down to find the source of the enticing smell, sniffed the grill, and discovered the smell was coming from inside. Being logical, he decided to open it. Bear style. BANG! A large Weber Grill tipped over on a cement floor makes a loud noise. The bear took off at full speed. And Tasha yelled…

“Curtis!!!” Once again, bear duty called. I threw on clothes, charged out to the porch, discovered that the grill was tipped over, and the bear long gone. I assured Tasha that everything was okay. It wasn’t easy. I understood. The loud crash had me jumping out of bed at the other end of the house. Tasha was one wall away. All’s well that ends well, right. The grill disagreed. It took a fair amount of work to repair. And our hopes of having the boys experience sleeping outside at our home in the future were squelched by mom.

The next memorable bear encounter started with our patio furniture moving around in the middle of the night. Have you noticed that most of my bear encounters start with ‘middle of the night?’ It’s the nature of bears. Not mine. But who would assume patio furniture would have anything to do with a bear? Not me. Crashing grills and garbage cans, of course. I hopped out of bed to explore the phenomena, carefully opening the door and peeking outside. Nothing….

Then I heard the crash. “Garbage can!” was my immediate thought. So I dashed across the house and peeked out the backdoor. The garbage can innocently stared back at me, standing tall, with no new claw marks. “Oh no, not our grill again,” I cursed, bee-lining it for the porch. But the grill was fine. Nothing, nada, zero, zilch. I opened the door and stepped out on the porch, looking up our roadway. Again, nothing. And then I noticed that our bird feeder was swinging back and forth, bent out of shape. Mentally, as well as physically, I was pretty sure.

It’a a strange fact bears like sunflower seeds. Earlier in the day I had spilled a few seeds around our patio chairs when I was refilling one of our bird feeders. The bear had been moving the furniture to get at the seeds! And then come around the house to tackle the bird feeder. Why such a big animal would like such a small seed was beyond me. But then again, bears are quite democratic when it comes to food.

Suddenly, however, I was very nervous. The still swinging bird feeder the bear had been playing tether ball with set off an alarm bell in my mind. In response, I swung my flashlight to the left. Not there. And then to the right. There he was, a big fellow like the photo above, about 20 feet away. He wasn’t running away; he wasn’t charging. He was just staring. And staring. Disconcerting to say the least. So I yelled at him— loudly— and prepared to dash inside. He continued to stare, and finally, as if he had made up his mind about something, slowly turned around and made his way up the road back to the forest. WTF, I wondered. And then I figured it out.

He had never seen a naked man before.

So we come to the end of my bear stories. I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

Peggy and I have now returned from our two months of exploring Greece, the Scottish Highlands, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It was a great trip and we are eager to share the highlights with you. My tentative blogging schedule will be to feature our present travel tales on Fridays and use Tuesdays for blogging my new book, UT-OH!

And now for Friday’s first travel post from our recent journey: Teaching Sheep to Fly