Surprisingly, the bears show up in the afternoon/evening only when we're not around. You can kinda see this guy checking out the bear box (between the two larger middle trees).
The big guy (we call him the 420 bear - see the time stamp):
The little guy:
The deer come out in the middle of the night whether we (and the dog) are there or not:
For some reason, the kitchen is worth checking out every single day. We're fanatics about keeping foodstuffs in the bear box or up out of reach (we have a cargo net in a tree). And NO food, shampoo, soap, or toothpaste where we sleep! I think our smell - probably the dog smell - keeps the bear away when we're there, but you never know what he'll do when an insane toothpaste craving hits. I've seen the Youtube clips! Would you want to wake up to a huge carrion-eater using YOUR purple Reach toothbrush? I think not.
So, the reason I told you all that is to tell you this: there is a battle of good and evil going on at the Spread. Human vs. animal. Wild and not-so-wild. And it's for the elderberries.
Every year I carefully evaluate the wild elderberry bushes. Some of the bushes are more like trees. The lower branches are bent and broken and dead where the bear and deer pulled them down to get at the fruit in years past, but the upper branches are heavy with clusters of tiny blue berries. One more week and they'll be just right. I go back the next week with my picking basket. No berries. The bear got them again! And the thieving gluttons didn't leave me a single berry!
Last September Hubby and I once again walked the razor edge of the elderberry ripeness/bear hunger ratio. And dang if we didn't time it just right. Woohoo! We took the quads out one afternoon and rode around for hours. We went to every single elderberry bush we knew of. And came back to camp with this:
Which made 10 of these:
Which tastes just like summer. Even when your outdoor living room looks like this:
and the footprints in your carpet look like this:
Sorry fellas. Maybe next year.
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