So we’ve been running ourselves a little ragged lately. It’s been a lot of stuff with the house, our road, and a lot of back and forth between the city and the country as decisions have to be made. There just hasn’t been steam left after a 3-4 hour round trip car ride 3 times a week to make me feel like posting.
To top it all off we emergency dog sat this last weekend for a friend’s 3 dogs in their very spacious home in Ballard which wasn’t convenient but was kind of fun in it’s own chaotic way. Regardless, we’ve finally made it through that and gotten some sleep…
So back to the original title of this post; now with 50% less excuses! This weekend while sipping coffee in Ballard with 4 dogs acclimating to new people, I got a ping on my phone from one of my cellular trailcams. Lo and behold, we finally got the last of our PNW big mammals on camera! BEHOLD! A bear in its natural habitat! No, not a Studebaker!
Why is this such a big deal? On our first summer on the property three years ago, we didn’t know a ton about PNW forests and had to learn it all as we went. We learned how to identify signs of animals like trees with bear scars and what bear scat looked like based on diets. And those are a couple of reasons we knew a bear came through our property. We’d never seen one. We hadn’t really seen any FRESH signs of them either except in blackberry season when I went out a week late to pick berries and piles appeared neatly in intervals down the road as the bear cleaned the bushes and made its deposits.
Honestly, I don’t think we really wanted to see one in the flesh. Bears while sort of like a larger raccoon (For the most part, they’re more afraid of you, would rather eat your trash than you, and unless babies are involved will generally bolt upon seeing you.) aren’t something I really long to encounter in the wild. Suffice it to say, we didn’t see any bears. Well, now we have and sadly it’s the less ideal kind – momma and cub.
I don’t mean to say I don’t like the bear population to live on, because I do wish for us to coexist with nature and bears have their place. I just don’t like seeing a momma and her cubs as close as she is to civilization. Over our rise there’s a neighborhood, and hopefully that doesn’t mean that these bears are garbage dependent and making bad choices; but, hungry mom’s gonna do what a hungry mom’s gonna do.
Thankfully, this momma doesn’t look too hungry but from the second picture we can see she has two cubs’ mouths to feed, so who knows. Also thankfully these are shots I woke up to as they happened around midnight. They haven’t made an appearance since so I think they were likely just passing through. Our hill is kind of a haven different animals seem to rest on at different parts of the year as they pass through their territory.
I’m glad our little land has these natives passing through it. It’s going to be a tough job continuing to keep them passing through and not hoping to use us as a never-ending buffet but there are plenty of deterrents to be had. There’s also plenty of food in our forest so that we should be able to continue to coexist. My guess as to why we’re seeing them is because we’re hearing more hunting in forest lands adjacent to our own. We’re going to double down on no trespassing signs along the edges this winter but for now momma and babes are avoiding hunters and that’s just fine with us.
Olympic Homestead 
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