My darling downstairs neighbor Linda just called (the sweet woman who helped me bury Buster, my guinea pig a few weeks ago).
She said she looked out her window yesterday morning to find her car door wide open. She went out to investigate and discovered a bear had opened the door and then unlatched the front seat console (without damaging it), removing a package of Dum Dum lollipops which it then demolished. The front seat was covered with mud, and there was a telltale paw print the burglar left on the car door. A furry B&E, no question.
Linda and her husband have been coming here every summer and fall for 15+ years and they’ve never seen a bear. The electronic lock on her car sometimes unlocks itself, she says, without her knowing. A flaw in her Honda.
This is the season where bears eat everything in sight before hibernating. I’ve spoken to a number of people who have lived here for years and never seen one, though.
I’m going to clean out my car today and make sure there are no squished, forgotten granola bars hiding in the glove box and that the doors stay locked! It’s making me laugh, as when living in the Bay Area in CA we all kept our cars safely locked for different reasons. Hope bears around here don’t figure out how to steal catalytic converters and trade them for honey.
Yesterday I joined a team of RMNP rangers and other volunteers to help manage 100 sixth graders from local schools on a park field trip. In our group, they were learning about beavers, whose population in the park has dwindled, as the moose and elk eat their food (willows) and drive them out. The park has a program that is restoring a 300+ acre area, putting up fencing to keep out moose and elk, but with openings at the bottom of the fencing for smaller animals, and gates for humans who want to check it out. It’s working — willows are again thriving and two beavers have found their way back to the CO river (also inside the “exclosure”) and are building dams. Excellent news for the ecosystem.
Moose and elk have no natural predators in the park, except for mountain lions, as there are no wolf packs (at least not yet) to keep their populations in check. There were similar problems in Yellowstone years ago until wolves were reintroduced to the park.
It was an exhausting, stimulating day by the river with rangers and kids and volunteers. Warm September sun, migrating hawks hunting the meadows, lunching on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches while sitting on a log by the snowmelt-swollen river (typical fall weather here — a couple of cold nights, maybe with snow on high peaks, then warm days with melted snow filling up creeks and the CO river whose headwaters are in the park). A leaf-shaped butterfly landed on a park ranger’s hand as we ended the day’s programs.
OK better get going to the local spray-and-wash car cleaning place.
[This painting was created to market a holiday watercolor class I’m teaching at a local art school here in November and December]
10″ x 7″ ink, watercolor, acrylic on paper = $95