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 Continue reading