HollowLands Posts

We have bears, and we have old orchards. Naturally, we also have bears in orchards. And among the distractions for writing and publishing, we have fierce Central Asian sighthounds seeking employment.

Normally the nocturnal set and the diurnal set don't meet, though the dogs are very interested in the scent trails they can reach, within the several acres around the cabin enclosed by the underground dog fence. The main dog field out front is also the main traffic area for all the critters, as one of the highways to the stream that waters the farm where they have a good view for predators. Most of them are smart enough to check to see if the dogs are out first before dropping by. And on those occasions where we let the dogs out without checking first ourselves, they're all quite capable of running, flying, or going to ground, according to their kind.

We get a regular daytime show of deer, turkey, and groundhog. At night — who knows what they all get up to? Certainly we have raccoons, possums, and porcupines (just to cite the larger mammals), along with the occasional coyote passing through. And we have black bears out back, like most of the wooded and mountainous areas in Pennsylvania.

This year, we've been seeing a sow and two cubs. They're regulars — our bird feeders are trashed annually, and the garbage cans are a challenge. Seeing them by daylight, though, isn't so common.

But it's August… and all the trees in the old orchard that still bear fruit (apples and a few pears) are heavily laden.

Bear'd last night, and bear'd the night before,
Gonna get bear'd tonight like we never got bear'd before,
When we're bear'd, we're trashed as trashed can be;
Our bears are members of the black bear family. *

Just two days ago I took this picture of our tidy array of bird feeders, in a photo essay about our 10-month-old puppy.

Here's what they looked like this morning.

Now, usually the black bears wake up hungry in early-mid spring and raid bird feeders (and garbage cans) before settling in to more natural food sources, and we had a visit from one a few weeks ago, right on schedule. We thought it was a young one, since it wasn't very competent. The red feeder (on the right) which came with the cabin suffered some damage but we repaired it and set everything to rights again.

This bear was rather more serious, and awfully late in the season, but then we had a very long winter, and heavy rains for weeks may have suppressed some of the usual food choices. Yesterday was the first day of uninterrupted sunshine in quite a while. Our neighbors have reported a sighting of a sow with four cubs in the area (one for each feeder?).

The dogs are always interested in the scent after a bear visit.

I picked up a camera to document the damage, and on the way back in the puppy did a cautious stalk on the slope behind the cabin. I thought he was disconcerted by the bees which were buzzing about in solitary fashion, but a closer look revealed a nice harmless Eastern garter snake slithering along — about 18 inches long and very slender.

Every now and then, one makes its way into the cabin and is evicted, with prejudice. The puppy who is usually scentless smelled musky a couple of days ago, and I'll bet he met a similar snake then and got sprayed, making him cautious now. When last seen, he was out back, working the back trail of the snake (hey, he's young and dumb) and not ready to give up yet.

More pics.

We have no children, but I have immense respect for the authors I know who manage to write while babies and toddlers are under their care. I don't know how they do it.

All of my pets are older than my writing career, but last September we got a puppy to keep our other dog company, after the death of an older dog. My writing has come to an almost complete stop since.

We have friends with exotic Asian sighthounds, and when litters happen, they think of us. Our older dog, Uhlan, is a tazi, one of many names for the country-of-origin dogs that run from North Africa to western China from whom the Saluki is derived. His parents are from Kazakhstan. So when an opportunity arose for us to take in a taigan, a country-of-origin version of the Afghan hound from Kyrgyzstan, from the first litter bred in America, we signed right up and called him Hussar (as in “the bold Hussar” of the song — boy, we got that right).

We read up on how he could be expected to be about the size of the tazi, who is 70 pounds, and envisioned the two of them racing across the fields, one slender, and one more robust.

Heh. He kept growing. And growing. And GROWING.

At first, Uhlan kept him in line, as befit an 8-year old dog with a proper sense of his own worth and prerogatives. Lots of snarling and fangs, and desperate puppy dodges when the play bows proved to be insufficient excuse for outrageous behavior.

At this point, they more or less get along, except that Hussar is still a puppy, at 9 1/2 months, and terribly eager to get his older brother to play with him on any and every excuse. They pursue chipmunks in the log pile with equal zeal.

And he weighs 90 pounds, with no end in sight. That's about double the size you see him at in most of these pictures.