I see a fair amount of wildlife where I live.  Hawks hunt from high above and a murder of crows keep watch over the neighborhood.  I even catch a glimpse of a bald eagle soaring overhead from time to time.  There are deer, rabbits, the occasional fox or opossum—all manner of birds and beasties.  What I don’t usually see are bears.  Not because they aren’t around, but because they tend to come by during the night and, unless they leave something behind to mark their passage—like broken birdfeeders—they pass through unseen.  Since I’ve been lacing the birdseed with cayenne, the bears don’t seem interested in the feeders.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t around.

When I added game cameras to the yard a few years back, I was surprised at the number of nighttime visitors.  What surprised me more was when they visited during the day.  The sight of a large bear a few feet from my parlor window is a bit disconcerting and a very good reason to look around the yard before I head out to garden.  Fortunately, the “wildest” critters I’ve run across unexpectedly out there have been an opossum and a skunk.  The possum froze and when I didn’t move, continued on its way.  The skunk I chose to quietly back away from and both of us left the encounter without making it a traumatic moment.

Some of the images my cameras capture make me smile, like little BooBoo Bear here.  He stopped by to explore the yard and take a peek in the window one afternoon while I was at work.  His (much) larger counterpart stopped by several evenings, sniffed the feeders and went on his way.  My doorbell cam recently captured one who made a stop by the backdoor to check out the water that had accumulated after the rain in the new birdbath waiting to be brought out back and into the garden.

Fortunately, bears are the exception, and I’m far more likely to round the corner of the house and see a deer a few feet away or come across a rabbit suddenly transformed into stone.  Those moments are happy surprises.  And so it goes when you’ve got a garden by the woods.