Bearing Greetings

My husband carved this bear's head. He put it up by the front door thus encouraging people to think carefully before they ignore the "No Trespassing" sign.

Here's a closer view of Jaded,  who Mike said would be  Jasper's grumpy brother, if he had one.

A noted about the sign on the front step. Ken MacKenzie made it out of horseshoe nails and gave to Mike. However, I had Mike add a nail when he put it up as an apostrophe, thus changing the plural to a singular possessive.

Gratitude Monday --Another Good Day

I woke up not dead.

I looked out the window. No bears.

The rest is gravy.

Too Close For Comfort

Checking out the compost. I took this photo through the screen door.

A small black bear wandered into my back yard yesterday afternoon. I was outside with my back to the steps on the deck reading the paper when something black walked through a corner of my vision. I thought it was a very large dog and was about to order it out of the yard when I realized what it really was.
I live in town, but near the edge. Moose have wandered by, deer have been in the yard, skunks even, but this was the first bear. I hope it is also the last.

I got braver and stepped on the deck for this photo.  It's trying to find a way out of my yard.

Stymied by the fence.

It checked out my garden, then climbed the side fence to the neighbour's yard and went up a tree for a while. Eventually it got down and went to a yard across the alley.
I regret that this story does not have a happy ending. Bears have been removed from town, but always came back. For safety reasons relocation was not an option.
I am sorry.

Gratitude Monday - Time Together

Summer is my husband's busy time of year. Unless he's booked the time off or the weather is lousy we hardly spend any time together.
His work was rained out for a few days the other week so we took a spur-of-the-moment day trip up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper.
We saw several bears that day in about half-a-dozen "bear jams." That's where several vehicles are stopped along both sides of the highway congesting traffic.
I was quite content to let my husband take care of the bear shots, but mostly I was happy to spend the day with him.

Taking the time to play together is important.
--photos by Mr. Goat's Lunch Pail

Gratitude Monday - Curiosity

It’s good to be curious. Having an interest in the world around us and acting on it keeps us young of mind. We’re vital and engaged in the world and it keeps us learning. That, in turn, keeps our minds active and useful.
We get going on new things, meet new people and find out why we like or dislike them. Curiosity gets our questions answered. It also gives us our questions.
Can you imagine how boring life would be if we didn’t have an active interest in what was happening? Or worse, if we thought we knew everything? At the very least, we wouldn’t have many friends, and if we did, I can’t seem them sticking around too long.
We wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything or try anything new.
Some of my more interesting culinary adventures were caused because I said to myself, “I wonder…”
Curiosity got me to taste musk ox and witchetty grub and I even tried a bite of raw hamburger once.
Without curiosity I would never have been caught in a jungle rainstorm in the Amazon and that means I would not know that palm leaves make a great cover for a camera.
I short, without curiosity I wouldn’t know very much, but I bet I’d think I did.
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And because I know you’re curious, the picture was taken out the back window of my car. I was a few miles east of the Banff National Park gate on Highway 11 when I saw three bears in the ditch. They’d been there when I went by several hours earlier and were still happily feeding away when I got back in late afternoon.
I stopped for a few pictures, but when this little guy decided to check out the vehicle in front of me I decided to leave.
I was just barely past it when I thought I needed a few more pictures so I shot them out the back window.

Here they are feeding in the morning:



I took this video out the front window of the car. It would have been of better quality if I'd gotten out of the vehicle, but that simply did not seem like a rational move.