My kids like watching the show "Little Bear". It is a cute cartoon about a little black bear named Little Bear, his family and friends. My parent's even have a puppet that is a little black bear named... you guessed it...Little Bear. Well on Thursday we had our own live version of "Little Bear" in our yard and Little Bear brought along Mother Bear. Maya, our elderly Chesie made fast work of putting both of them up a tree, right between the house and the barn. We were all pretty impressed that she treed them seeing as she is not a bear dog, but I guess her protective side came out.
Adin was at school, but the girls and I watched them from the deck for a while. I was protecting the bird feeders. It was pretty comical watching Little Bear goofing around and playing in the tree. It is hard to see him in the pictures as he is way up at the top, but he was sitting on a branch dangling both legs over the side of the branch. He would also chew on small sticks and leaves and then toss them on the ground. After a while they finally felt comfortable enough to come down and head off into the woods again.
I just hope that after being treed, they think twice about venturing into our yard again. I was a good learning opportunity for the kids, to see Mother and Little Bear and talk about bear safety (seeing as we live in bear country) and also the reason we hunt in the fall and not spring (except for Turkeys and we only hunt the Tom's in the spring). It is important to Scott and I to teach the kids good ecology, environmental and animal respect and the ethics of hunting and managing wildlife.
