A bear wandered into the open garage while I was outside working on some wiring on the front porch. I would not have known he was there except that a woman stopped her car in front of the house a minute or so later to take pictures.
He found a little paper bag of trash that I was collecting while I was working – it had a food wrapper in it along with some wiring scrap. I had to shoo him off twice before he finally gave up and left for good.
The free turkey delivery is convenient, but how to choose?
Maybe let’s think bigger… behold Turkulon – “The Feathered Avenger of Death” from New World:
Darlene and I spent a couple weeks in late June and early July at the Tahoe house taking care of a bunch of house maintenance, including roof repair, clearing newly fallen branches and pine needles, moving the bear box to accommodate a widening of the driveway, etc. We took some time off from all that to go climb to the top of a very windy Mt. Rose (elev. 10,785 ft.), do some mountain biking and hike up the Five Lakes trail near Palisades/Alpine Meadows.
We also had another bear visitor while up working on the roof:
Click through for the full gallery:
The noise you hear is a snow plow operating nearby, probably clearing the road intersection off-camera to the left. An hour later, apparently while I was editing the original video clip of his dash across the road, the bear came back – with the snow plow still operating nearby — and he tried crossing again several times. (I’ve now combined all the clips together.)
Well, not really so unexpected – turkeys and baby deer in Santa Cruz…
And another bear in North Tahoe…
And now, in August, a mama bear and her cub:
I heard a crash and thud this evening like falling furniture but saw the cats weren’t the cause. After a minute or so there was another thump and thud and the sound of an owl hooting. So I grabbed my camera and went upstairs to the patio outside the bedroom, expecting maybe to see an owl going at the plastic owl on the patio. (The fake owl is there to keep away small birds that would otherwise fall prey to Pan as he lies in wait every morning.)
However, what I found was two great horned owls in a vicious brawl on the patio floor. Pan and I watched from behind the door as they kept at it for some ten minutes or so, despite me turning on the porch light, making noise and cracking open the door to get a better look. After nearly ten minutes of this, and not wanting to see how far this would eventually go, I pounded on the glass to drive them off. Now I’m imagining that one of these owls was a newcomer trying to encroach on my neighborhood owl’s plastic “mate” on my porch.
It’s not unusual for us to see or hear owls around the house here in Santa Cruz, including perched on my bedroom roof but I’ve never captured decent video or photos of them. (Unfortunately, I didn’t notice my auto-focus was disabled on my camera until five minutes into filming this brawl.)
Before posting, I looked online to see if this vicious-looking fight is something great horned owls commonly do. I found that they are territorial but confrontations are usually in the form of sounding vocalizations and spreading wings before escalating further. However, it sounds like they are known to sometimes go so far as to kill each other in territorial conflicts. Would love to read comments on this encounter from any well-informed folk.
They’re so desperate for acorns, it doesn’t even matter if I’m in the open garage using noisy power tools:
We had a big bear visit the Tahoe house a few days ago – for size comparison, that bear box holds two full size trash cans and then some:
Update: And another couple of visitors in September:
