Noises at Night

It's pretty quiet around here.  Even during the day, the most we hear is some chirping birds, a woodpecker, and occasionally the hum of a neighbor's generator in the distance. So when we heard something at our front door a little after midnight last night, I was a little apprehensive, and my wife was scared.

We know there is wildlife in the area.  When we came looking at the property before buying it, a moose got up and left as we parked. There is also plenty of evidence on our property that moose and dear abound. So after the noise at the door stopped, we peeked out the living room window to see what it was.  It was dark outside except for the light of a waxing crescent moon hidden by a few clouds. But that was enough light to see a bear wandering down the driveway.  A few seconds later, I saw her cub. I guess now that spring has finally arrived, the bears must be looking for food.  We don't have much here yet, but it looks like we need to be very careful about controlling smells.

We've been sleeping in the living room by the fire since the last week was very cold at night.  But since it was warmer this week, we decided to immediately move our beds back upstairs and away from any food stuffs.  These bears were definitely heavy enough to push their way through the front door if they wanted to. 

This must be the noise I heard at the
front door in the middle of the night.

Fortunately for us, while we lost two hours of sleep, the bears didn't bother us the rest of the night.  But it did bring a lot more questions to mind, which didn't help us get back to sleep any more quickly. What would we do if a bear did get inside the house? Can we compost our food waste without creating a bigger bear problem? How will we keep animals from eating or destroying the food in our garden?  Should we get a dog? Should we consider getting a firearm?

It sounds like there are many topics for future posts deriving from this episode.