Pennsylvania Game News - April 2009 - 53

she acted threateningly toward me when I accidentally ran into her. She and the cubs had always run off together. On this evening, they not only ate but they played. First one cub, then two, and then three cubs climbed high up in a black locust tree and out on branches that looked too slender to hold them, perhaps playing their version of “king of the mountain.” Even the fourth cub joined them off-andon, but it usually stuck close to the mother bear instead. Once two of them faced each other, all four of their legs curled around the trunk, and alternately nuzzled each other and batted back and forth, like prize fighters in training. Sometimes one or two of the cubs would move close to the sow, as if trying to see what she was eating. As she dug in the ground, they all crowded near, but I couldn’t tell if she was giving them food. I was particularly interested in observing the uncommon cinnamon bear, and I noticed that another cub had a slight cinnamon cast, too. I couldn’t remember seeing a cinnamon cub here before, but Dave claimed that there had been one several years ago. We watched them for more than an hour, until it was too dark to see. I was elated because that was the longest observation time I had ever had with bears. The next day we found muddy bear paw prints on our back porch door, and then Bruce discovered more, five feet off the ground, on the window over the kitchen sink. The bears had been giving our kitchen, at least, a thorough examination, and we worried that they might get even more familiar. I was no longer feeding the birds from feeders hanging on the back porch, believing that winter feeding is the wisest course when living close to bears. Even so, I always bring the feeders inside every evening during November, December, March and early April, when some bears are liable to be around. And, as it turned out, that was the only interest bears showed in our home, even during the summer when only a APRIL 2009 screen door separated the kitchen from the outdoors. It rained hard the morning after we watched the bear family. I waited until there was a break in the weather and hurried up to the corner of First Field to look for bear sign. I paced back and forth where I knew they had been and could find no sign, not even where the mother bear had been digging. If we hadn’t seen them with our own eyes, we wouldn’t have believed they had been up there. Over the next several weeks, however, we found fresh bear scat on all of our trails. Often I followed in the footsteps of bears, because I would find many large and small rocks wrenched out of the ground and overturned on our trails as the bears searched for ants. Near the end of May I wandered through the spruce grove and sat down at the edge under a spruce tree, hoping to locate what I thought was a crow’s nest. The crows flew in and scolded, but still I couldn’t see that nest in the dense tops of the spruces. Soon after, I heard a crashing below the grove and immediately thought bear. I remained seated, but as the bear lumbered up the field trail, I grew increasingly uneasy, especially when it turned and headed toward my spruce tree. I inched my way around it and the bear heard me. It followed behind me around the tree about 20 feet away. Knowing that bears don’t see very well, and that I shouldn’t run from it, I turned around and yelled, “Go away, get out of here, buddy!” It paused for a second and then ran off through the grove. It was a large male and probably on the prowl for a female. I suspected that our resident female was in heat and the youngsters were on their own. The next day I walked Greenbrier Trail, listening to birdsong. As I rounded a corner, I spotted a bear on the trail ahead, with its head down as it plodded along. This one also appeared to be a big male, maybe the same one from the day before. Luckily, he hadn’t seen me. I backpedaled fast, because 53

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2009

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