Bears

 

     Many are the times we have heard of people being attacked and hurt by bears and we have seen many bear in the wild over the years and they can make the day very exciting.

     Years ago when we lived at a place called Pass Creek my husband was hauling fruit for a fruit stand and sometimes some of the fruit was stored under our carport which was beside a creek with lots of trees along it.  It was an easy place for the fury creatures to hide out in and in the morning we would find plenty of the fruit devoured.  At the same place one day I was looking out the back door window and right there in the garden was a big brown bear standing very tall and I’m sure he was looking right at me and didn’t like someone watching him enjoying the garden harvest.  In the front yard of the same house where the children were playing a small bear came along so my husband hollered at him and chased him up the tree so we could see him clearly from the window.  The black fuzzy ball sat up there so he took a two by four and pushed him out of the tree so he fell and ran away.  We couldn’t let that bear think he belonged there where the children were. 

     Some time in the past where we live now, a good size black bear came to the yard and my husband chased him up the very big poplar tree right by our place just a little into the neighbors.  He went quite high and sprawled himself over a limb and huffed and puffed at us watching what we would do below.  We had been just heading out to go somewhere so we went on our way and of course after we left he went also.

     It was a fall day another year and I was digging carrots and was almost finished  digging when very faintly I heard a whiff sound. It was so soft it was seeming to be my imagination but it was enough to make me lift my head from my work.  Would you believe it, a big brown bear was under the apple tree next to the house. I didn’t know what to do.   He looked even bigger when he stood up by the tree as though he were ready to climb it.  How was I to get to the house without startling that bear.  I had to pass the apple tree to get to the house.  If I made noise he might chase me, so I stayed right there digging.  Then as he was standing by the tree, he tore off like lightning.  I saw him go down into the creek which is by the front door and disappear.  So I quickly finished the carrots and left the two buckets of carrots in the garden and picked up the two pots of geraniums that I had dug from the garden and got quickly to the house and let my husband know there were two buckets of carrots in the garden.  I watched out the window as he went out to get the carrots and saw the bear go down the creek.  So he did not go as far as I thought he had.  He was just hiding and didn’t go down the creek till after I came in.

     Just this morning we were standing by the kitchen window and a big shinny black bear came sauntering from the direction of a Saskatoon bush and came along behind the truck and then passed the wood pile and over to the creek and was gone.        

 

     About a couple miles down the road from us by the tracks lives a friend of ours out in the wilderness.  The other day he saw two bears coming toward his place and he watched as his big black dog went to meet them.  The dog circled the bears and kept taking wads of fur from them so they took off and the dog ran ahead of them as he does the many horses he likes to herd for his master. The dog was determined to take care of these intruders and the bears were so scared they headed for the river to get away from that dog. It’s a big, mighty Fraser River but it only took a couple minutes for those two frightened bears to swim across that river. 

     It is wonderful for Jesus to use the dog to help protect us from danger.

     A friend who lives across the river came to a house about two blocks from us where she was taking care of a lady’s yard while she was on vacation.  She was going about her work and was standing under the apple tree when she noticed a freshly broken apple on the ground beside her.  She looked up in the tree and there was just above her a bear  sitting eating apples.  So she withdrew herself.

     The plums are a favorite of the bears and there is a row of plum trees on both sides of our yard so the bears have been very plentiful the last while in this plum season.

     The other day when Richard sat down at the table he looked out the window and saw a big brown bear climbing the tree beside the house, so he went outside and blew the bicycle horn and chased the bear since she had come down and she went back up the tree. At the very top of the tree was one of her cubs. It is a wonder that little branch did not break.  We went in the house and she came down and I saw her go across the yard but she came back to the end of the garden and over the lawn to an old maple tree where she and her three cubs sat for quite a long time. Those cubs can teach us how important it is to obey.  They did not come down that tree till their mother told them to.  What obedient little cubs and we should obey Jesus just as strictly. The next day the neighbor took his dog and cat in the house as he watched two mother bears and five cubs playing in his yard and climbing the trees.

July 2010

 September 2010