Our First Bear Sighting

Shortly after we moved in 20 years ago we were told there had been some black bears living back in a cave not far from our house. Of course, as the years went by we wrote that off to someone trying to mess with us.

Then a few months ago we started to have trouble keeping our trash bags in our trash cans. Every morning the cans would be on their side and we’d have to hunt for the bags of trash. We knew something large was dragging them off into the woods, but we figured it was a couple of large raccoons teaming up or something. Little did we know….

After a couple of weeks of this Kathy finally found some large paw prints down at our pond.

This picture isn’t real clear, but it’s the only visual evidence we have. When I got home from work I went down and looked at it and agreed it could be a bear paw print. But, it still wasn’t “real”.

A couple of evenings later Kathy yelled down the steps “the bear is in the yard!” and being the skeptic that I am I slowly walked up knowing full well that she was pulling my leg. When I looked out the window and saw that bear sitting at the back corner of the field looking up towards our house my heart started pounding. A bear, a good sized bear, in our yard!

It was dusk when we saw him sitting there so we watched and waited. The night before he had eaten an 8 lb bag of food we feed the fish in our pond with so we were pretty sure he liked our place and would be moving up towards the house as it grew dark. Sure enough he walked up towards the house and then veered left towards the pond apparently remembering where he had scored a jackpot the night before. He nosed around for a minute and then realizing that he had eaten tonight’s dinner the night before he started for the house.

By now we had moved the trash cans into the garage to spare us the duty of picking up trash strewn about everywhere. So we were a little concerned that he might get annoyed at us for teasing him with all the easy goodies in the weeks before. A bear is one thing… a ticked off bear is quite another!

We were fascinated and enjoying our first ever bear sighting, but at the same time we were realizing that we had a bear in our yard and four kids who spend a lot of time in the yard. Bears and boys might not be the best combination! So we did what most people would do and we called the Sheriff’s Office and the Animal Control Department.

I got a kick out of my brief chat with the women at the Animal Control Department. She told me that their office closed in 3 minutes and that it’s rare a bear is still around by the time they arrive. So I told her to enjoy her evening and that we’d call the next day if we needed her. Her lack of enthusiasm may have had more to do with the difficulty of actually dealing with a captured bear then with her work hours. Check out this post for ane example of what I’m talking about: Bear Encounter

Our dedicated staff of officers at the Sheriff Department were more then willing to come out for a look. The first officer to arrive did so just in time to catch a look at the bear as he trotted off into the woods. It was his first bear sighting as well! A short while later two other officers arrived hoping to catch a look for themselves, but our bear was long gone or at least we were hoping he was.

Having 3 police officers and 3 police vehicles in the driveway I did what any responsible homeowner would do to provide some entertainment for them. We broke out the radar gun and went to the end of the driveway to hunt for other prey. Much to my surprise 10 or so cars went by at the speed limit or below and my own private police force quickly grew bored and went onto greener pastures.

I’m glad we had a bear sighting. Yes, it’s made our strolls through our woods a bit more dicey and for the first few days and my late night trips to the hot tub weren’t quite as relaxing as they had been pre-bear.

So please stay alert when you cruise Gum Spring Road. We’ve always had a healthy deer population and now you have to be on the lookout for bears as well. For more information about growing population of bears in Northern Virginia check out this great video and Website the State of Virginia has put together: Living with Bears in Virginia