dang stepped in bear scat !!

dang I stepped in bear scat while walking around under our apple tree. The snow apples are just now ripe and evidently not just the deer and rabbits have been enjoying the drops, but it appears the bear have too.

Well I guess I'll have to be more careful where I walk until the snow comes !!

  maybe carry some pepper spray too! I'm skeered of bears...

Ah, the troubles you face in the country -  If growing the food wasn't enough!

Oh, I would be so afrraid to know that I was in an area with bears! I live in an area where ther are no bears.
Are there a lot of bears in your area?

                          Belle

I've lived most of my life where there were bears -- blacks and, in Alaska, grizzleys, and it's rare to see one, even rarer to have problems with one.  Exercise reasonable caution and you are safer with bears than with human beings.  Of course, if you are out where you are very likely to run into a bear, it's always wise to be prepared to take strong measures.... a .45 cal. pistol is an absolute minimum; a .30-06 or .308 would be better (but it's hard to pick berries and carry a rifle at the same time).

Kathleen

i'm not really afraid of bears, they only bother me if i'm a great distance away from the house..like one time i walked 2 miles away and there was one in the swamp i walked by..i asked for a ride home that day from someone.

here at the house they really don't bother much..they are just after the fruit that falls from the apple tree..them and the deer and rabbits..the snow apples are just now ripe..and some are way too high to pick so they fall..we pick up some of the better falls..but there are way too many apples for us so the animals get quite a few.

we don't mind feeding the wildlife..i actually plant shrubs and bushes and trees FOR the wildlife..however..i didn't really appreciate the scat where i wasn't looking or expecting it.

they generally don't come around for the apples..so it was a surprise.

our cats have been afraid to go out at night the last week..so i guess that is what was scaring them..also my son is totally freaked..he carries his pistol..but was so scared when he came over to put wood on the fire one night and heard one growl..that he turned around and went home without stoking the fire..wahhhhhhhh...meant i had to do it..what a pansy ass.

brenda are you calling your poor son a pansy ass.? It is not kind to pansies any way and what about all those poor little boys brought up to despise pansies who then find they are one. Can you imagine the trauma when you find yourself longing to be in the arms of another man as a teenager, to be what you most despise, what everyone has always laughed at. I know  a male transvestite with a husband, the couple is about my age  the husband still doesn't eem to admit to himself he is something so awfull as a homosexual. Liberty the transvestite laughs at him for saying hes not really gay.  Can you imagine a big manish looking man untidily dresssed who in all his adult life has not got round to accepting what he evidently is, to judge from his wife opinion and she should know.

  What fun living with bears and a son who does your fire for you. He had better get a pepper spray you would not want to lose him.
Do you have grand children? agri rose macaskie.

brenda you crack me up.... I would be calling him a pansy too!!! mostly to convince him to do it because I am a pansy! I don't know why the idea of bears bothers me so much. cougars don't bother be near so much for some reason. I guess when I think of bears I think of the 'raiding the trashcan' type ones who have lost much of their fear of humans. I want wild predators to be more afraid of me then I am of them just like my mammy told me 

  On turnign it over i wonder if it isnot an story using simils and you growled at him and so he did not come and so you called him a pansy for not facing your rage, to punish him. Maybe you just want to make us green with envy beause you son brings the wood in for you but you don't want us to know how proud you are of him so you found a reason to call him a pansy to throw us off scent. I can't get mine to do anything of the kind though he's quite sweet to me which is a lot, if he marries his girl will killl me for not house training him better. agri rose macaskie.

i didn't "call" him a pansy ass..silly..i was just teasing on here..he is afraid of tiny little bugs..so he is a pansy ..and he knows it..

no he isn't gay..and if he was ..then he would be..that wasn't to say he was ..you are silly girl.

my MIL taught my son to be afraid of everything that creeps or crawls..i have always tried to get him over his fear of critters..but his dad's side of our family are fraidie cats..yes..they are..really.

i will stick my hands into a bush full of bees and tell him...see they won't hurt you....he is 34 nearly35 years old..and he should be able to SEE that i'm not being kiilled by the things !!

he is afraid of everything..literally..and it is an unrational fear..he has never had any reason to be afraid..he just is cause his dad and gramma were on his dad's side .
if his fear wasn't so unfounded and unrational i wouldn't tease him about it at all.

i have always been open to him with bugs and critters that i am not afraid of..fear is numbing and will do no one any good..you must stand up to what you fear

      I don't know much about psychiatry, don't they say that people aren't actually afraid of what makes them afraid, they got frightened and then sort of put that fear on bees and things, so if you want to cure him you have to find out what really frightened him, though i agree conditioning helps and being allowed to be afraid of things or encouraged to be so can make people more afraid, people can think it makes you more interestign if your afraid.
     On the other hand its quite sensible to have some fear of bears. If you manage to control your fear bees wont bite you, i heard they bite if they smell adrenaline or whatever it is that fear produces to trigger our run of fight action, so its possible thaqt they bite one person and not another and if its you they bite then it might be stupid pretendign they didnot. They might no tbite you but they may well bite him and unless he is  are a masachist its better for him to keep a distaqnce from bees nests.

      In everyday circumstances bullies can bully some say it is not real to imagine their are bullies twenty percent of people  suffer from bullying so thinki g you see bullies is nt unreal and this business you must trust people is silly. People bully and if you are afraid do say, oh don't be silly we doesn't really hurt. It's real life is to be pushed around, another excuse of bullies is we are the spice of life, bullies have techiques for keeping hold of victims, that it is just wet to mind is one of there ways is one of the ways of presuading victims to go on bareing them.
      There exist in human relations a bit of positive criticism and there is squashing and distinguishing the difference is what keeps you out of the hands of the worst types or of cripplingly negative people.
        If you stay around jwith bullies you will only get a reputation for asking for punishment and the world is full of those who like whatching others squeal. So if its people saying don't be silly don't be afraid of me, or if they tell you not to be afraid of bears, normaly its time to get right out, if you are not tied by some other member of the group parents, children, the necessity to go on earning money. If you can't get out or it is time to buy yourself a pepper spray. Normally bullies are also good at blackening you, they use you and blacken you and as blackening serves to get rid of anyone who might help you, you will find you are on your own.
  Of course all this is combined with distinguishing who is really trying to stop you being scared by everything and who has a mad irresponsability or is mischeviouse. agri rose macaskie.

I currently live in bear and mountain lion country. Supposedly there's a mountain lion den less than a mile from here. So far out of 2 years I've only seen 3 bears here, no mountain lions.

However just because you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

In late January I'm moving back to NC (currently living in foothills of north eastern California). Too dry here during the summer (no rain at all) and land too expensive. I heard from my mom in NC (central NC) that there has been a few reports of black bears but it isn't too surprising. They probably came down from the NC mountains in search of food or something.

well ours are likely asleep now under the blizzard

My grandmother had acres of blueberries we would rake for weeks every summer growing up.  Every now and then a bear would get into them.  An area would be mostly cleared of berries, maybe the size of a driveway.  Now and then the bear would leave a calling card.  Black like a whole in the world with a stink so bad that decorum prohibits further description.

How did you miss detecting it?

All the bear sitings we've had have been of a hairy butt, as it's running away as fast and as far as possible.  I think there have been something like 11 attacks on people from mountain lions since 1900? 

People continue to push wild animals into smaller and smaller sections of habitat, and then complain when their pile of stinking garbage is torn apart by an animal whose job in the forest is that of salvager and rotten stuff eater.  The rural people I know who have "bear problems" actually have horrendous garbage storage problems. 

My brother's garbage stinks to high heaven.  4 people in the house, they throw away vast amounts of food, fill 4 barrels each week.  I waste little food, anything that must be discarded goes to the hens or the compost heap.  I take out my 1 barrel of trash every couple of weeks, no smell, rarely more than half full, and thats if I've been cleaning out junk.

marinajade wrote:
All the bear sitings we've had have been of a hairy butt, as it's running away as fast and as far as possible.  I think there have been something like 11 attacks on people from mountain lions since 1900? 

People continue to push wild animals into smaller and smaller sections of habitat, and then complain when their pile of stinking garbage is torn apart by an animal whose job in the forest is that of salvager and rotten stuff eater.  The rural people I know who have "bear problems" actually have horrendous garbage storage problems. 

Garbage isn't always the attractant.  My former in-laws ended up having bear trouble and their place is literally fit for the cover of a magazine (and has been in magazines).  But they persisted in putting out bird feeders, and thought it was cute when a bear found the feeders and raided them -- until the bear started coming up on their back deck and looking into the sunroom!  Moral of the story is, DON'T FEED THE BEARS!  LOL!

Oh, yes, and when I was little, and we were living on the homestead in Alaska, my mother had to shoot a black bear that tried to get into our cabin, but that was because it was a very poor year for berries, and the bears were hungry -- and Mom had a couple of rhubarb pies in the oven!  She had three small children in the house, and was six months pregnant with my twin sisters, and Dad was at work, so she had to deal with it herself -- shot it twice through the living room window as it was standing up against the window (after it had been around the house twice, sniffing and scratching at the doors and windows).  Here it was the scent of food that was the attractant, not garbage.

Kathleen

we put bird feeders out and hand feed a few deer..but the bear don't bother them if we remember to take them inside when it is still "bear time" in our area..after it is really cold and they are hibernating we leave the feeders out at night..safe from coon the way we hang them..but bear..well they manage to get them no matter what if they are awake.

right now our bear are hibernating..

when it warms up the feeders will be left empty at night again and we'll make sure the deer feed has been picked before we go to bed..

as for the mountain lion/cougars...they are around but we don't have a problem with them here..so far..there are better places for them then in our yard..to hunt....like where thye have calves and chickens..

Here it was the scent of food that was the attractant, not garbage.

What's the difference to a starving and desperate bear?  I guess the moral of that story is that shot guns have their uses when you live in the woods. 

I like to think you can shoot at them (in their general direction) without having to actually kill them.  But it depends on the desperation of the animal, for sure.