Return of the bear

The dog woke me at 4 a. m. again, all excited. This time I figured it was probably a bear so I grabbed one of my larger handguns on the way out the door.

My little 30 pound beagle mix once again successfully chased the bruin off.

The bear had been busy. Some years back I used to store waste vegetable oil in 60 gallon plastic barrels. The waste veggie would be left a while to let some of the crud settle out. Then I'd pump the veggie from the top of the tank to use in my diesel engines. In more recent years my oil supply started to put the waste veggie back in the 4.5 gallon containers they came in. It made for a lot less handling and the barrel system was discarded.

The drums were pumped out and the residue cleaned up with a biodegradable degrease r. Apparently not all the grease got cleaned out of one of the barrels. Over the years some rain water collected in it through the little 3 inch bunghole.

The bear dragged the barrel down the hill and dumped out out the grease, water, and degreaser slurry. Believe me, it's foul. If the bear ate any of it, he's not going to be feeling well. If he does get sick he'll avoid my place, so maybe it'll work out.

He also flipped over a log bench and tore it apart. The bench's been sitting long enough that the base logs have a little rot in them. The bear destroyed the bottom of the logs looking for bugs and worms. Can't blame him for that as that's what bears do in the wild.

Years ago I had a sock type grease filter that I had soaking in a 5 gallon bucket of degreaser and water. In the night a bear came by and drank half the bucket. That bear stayed away and I wasn't bothered by bears for years.

A friend recommended pouring some ammonia in a garbage can. When the bear digs in the can he'll get annoyed and move on. I'm going to try that next. Also going to reinforce my basement door.

There's a guy from Rhode Island down the road from me who's feeding the beast. I've yet to get it into his head that he's not doing the bear any favors. Nuisance bears get destroyed. I really do not want that to happen this bear. At this point I'm mostly concerned with keeping him away from my place.

-Sixbears