Wednesday, October 21, 2020

We have a motion detection light mounted on our deck. It goes off quite often and when we first got it I would peek out the window to see what might have set it off. I could never see anything so assumed it was set off by one of the neighbourhood cats. Early in the morning large trucks going up and down the hill will sometimes shake things enough to set it off.

I was awake early this morning (and I don’t want to think how early that early will be when we change time) when I noticed the light come on. I didn’t hear any traffic but ignored it. After about two seconds I heard a crash, followed by another thud. I ran for my glasses and out to the door. I could see that the garbage can had been tipped over so I thought it was probably be a bear.

I went out to the back deck to take a better look! What was I thinking? No bear in site but something had ripped open the small bag of garbage that was in the can. There wasn’t enough of it to spread around so it was very easy to pick it up, put a new bag in the can, and set everything to rights.

When I talked to Pat later in the day he said that one of the authors he had interviewed mentioned that bears really hate the smell of bleach. We’d never heard about this before and it certainly isn’t promoted in any bear aware information I’ve seen. But I sprinkled a bit of bleach around the carport and wiped down the garbage can with bleach. There is probably some environmental or animal rights reason we shouldn’t do it but I’m hoping the bear won’t be back.