When deer attack!

I was innocently working away in my office (living room) when the barking began. We live in a medium-sized town in southwestern Colorado, where owning a dog seems to be a prerequisite, and every canine in the neighborhood was going off about something, resulting in a cacophonous symphony. Our dog, Princess (no, we didn’t give her that name), joined the chorus with her incessant yapping. The barking had an urgent pitch to it -- the bear tone. December would arrive in just three days, so it would be pretty remarkable if we still had bears roaming around. It might even be some kind of record -- related to the drought and the wacky warm weather, no doubt -- and so worth noting.

A bear in our midst, for better or worse, has become a somewhat mundane occurrence. We live at the edge of the neighborhood, and our backyard is the wildland-urban dividing line. Not that creatures from either side of the line abide by it. Humans around these parts, often clad in spandex, swarm the hillsides like ants. Bears, raccoons, deer and coyotes roam the alleys like surly teenagers looking for some nutmeg to smoke. A mama bear and her cub spent a good portion of the summer lounging in our neighbor’s backyard, and the alley down the street has a permanent set of greasy bear tracks leading from the fast-food joint’s grease bin to trash can to wild plum to trash can.

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