The gouges on our garage door were deep and angry, ripping into the old wood, leaving splinters scattered across the breezeway. Our porch, too, had been attacked, the screens sliced diagonally, the cuts clean as a razor — or a bear claw. A very hungry black bear, it turned out, roused too early from its somnolence by this year’s weirdly warm winter weather.
Black bears are a regular feature of life in the Berkshires. Harmless for the most part, sometimes even comical. One summer, several years back, we had one break into our garage, pull out a full bag of bird seed, and proceed to sit under the trees at the top of the drive, bag between his legs, shoveling seed into his mouth and refusing – despite the banging of trash can lids – to leave. The cop who was finally called had no better luck with his horn and flashing lights. It wasn’t until he turned on the siren that the bear, with visible disgust, got up and lumbered away. He was spotted again, hours later, at the bottom of the driveway, gazing up longingly at the scene of the crime.
Bears, I’m told, can smell bird seed a mile away, and they never forget where they discovered a tasty treat. There’s a chance that our recent marauder is one and the same as our summer guest. Bears in the wild can live up to 30 years. If so, his visit this time was a lot less light-hearted. The claw marks and sliced screens testify to his innate brute strength – a male can weigh up to 600 pounds – and ravenous appetite. Though his hunger, unleashed perhaps by our warming planet, could very well be of our own making.
The Bear
by Susan Mitchell
Tonight the bear
comes to the orchard and, balancing
on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees,
hanging onto their boughs,
dragging their branches down to earth.
Look again. It is not the bear
but some afterimage of her
like the car I once saw in the driveway
after the last guest had gone.
Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground.
Whatever moves in the orchard—
heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind.
The bear is long gone.
Drunk on apples,
she banged over the trash cans that fall night,
then skidded downstream. By now
she must be logged in for the winter.
Unless she is choosy.
I imagine her as very choosy,
sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying
each one on for size,
but always coming out again.
Until tonight.
Tonight sap freezes under her skin.
Her breath leaves white apples in the air.
As she walks she dozes,
listening to the sound of axes chopping wood.
Somewhere she can never catch up to
trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow.
When she does find it finally,
the log draws her in as easily as a forest,
and for a while she continues to see,
just ahead of her, the moon
trapped like a salmon in the ice.