Vermonters get wide-eyed and animated when they tell you their bear stories. Most have one. The stories are mostly pretty tame- a bear at the bird feeder or on the back deck looking through a sliding glass door. Sometimes they are a little more emotional, like a chicken coop destroyed and a flock wiped out. One of the very first times we met our up-the-road neighbor, Sue (who we frequently see out driving her wonderful mare), she asked us if we had seen “the bear” yet. Apparently, our neighborhood has our very own bear. She sees tracks, scat, and the bear itself around her barn and pasture quite often. We hadn’t see “the bear” yet. Until last Friday.
That night, we decided to treat ourselves to a night out for dinner. It was finally a nice, sunny day, so I left the sliding front door to the barn open when we went to dinner, hoping to let things air out a little since everything was feeling so damp. We got home after dark, and when I went to shut the chickens in for the night, I found their can of scratch dumped over in the barn. I figured a raccoon had been opportunistic and helped himself to a nice snack. I went on with chores/night check, and swung through the barn one more time to be sure nothing was hiding in any stalls. There was something moving around in the woods next to the barn that sounded big enough, and when I pointed my headlamp in that direction I saw eyes staring back at me, but again, figured our raccoon friend was hanging out. I shut the sliding door tight and headed to bed.
Rich woke me up Saturday after he had been out with Gus to tell me that “something had pulled the barn door off its hinges during the night,” which sounded nearly impossible as that door is a super solid, old school wooden door on a slider track that I can barely move 
But sure enough, I got out there and the door was off its track with a huge gash where our “raccoon” had wrenched it open. The can of scratch and chicken food was dumped again. There was a big mess inside the barn, but there really wasn’t much food actually eaten- except that the sunflower seeds in the scratch bucket seemed to have been painstakingly removed while the cracked corn was left behind.
The more we talked about it, the more we concluded that “the bear” had finally come to visit us. I still can’t prove this was done by a bear, but I don’t really want to meet the raccoon that can do that ^^ to solid wood! I guess next time we see Sue, we’ll have to tell her we have joined the bear club.
We decided not to mess around and swung by Cheshire Horse to get a few things to hot wire the door. As soon as the word “bear” was mentioned, everyone in the store knew. I did appreciate the young guy who actually helped us come up with a plan…as enthusiastic as he was about “zapping that bastard,” he did give us some useful advice on picking out a powerful charger and high tensile wire that was easy to rig up. It’s hard to see here, but basically we hot wired the full door and ran it in a “<” over to that little bracket under the window on the left, hopefully cutting off the point of entry.
Fortunately, things around the barn have been pretty anticlimactic since we got it wired. I’m hoping that the clicking from the energizer was enough of a deterrant. We’ll have to eventually take this down to be able to get in and out of the barn again, but I’m trying not to take it down too soon. We may also need to run the wire all the way around the barn, including the chicken run, which is built off the back.
I think “the bear” may have passed through the horse pasture Tuesday night though. I went down there around 8:30pm for night check, and the horses were really edgy, snapping to attention with every twig that popped in the woods. Poor Fizz was so tense-
After night check, I kept looking out the bedroom window for as long as there was enough light to see down to the pasture, and she stood rooted to the ground in the exact same spot,staring off into the woods, for at least 30 minutes after I left the field with plenty of hay out for them. In the morning, it was clear that they had been running the front fence line- nervous poop everyone, which is completely out of character for them. The corner post near the water bucket seemed to have big claw marks up and down it!
So, I guess it’s fair to say we have our own bear story now! And, as a bit of a public service announcement, Vermont Fish and Wildlife has a list of tips if you find yourself in a human-bear encounter. Notably, if you surprise a bear, you are supposed to “back away slowly while repeating ‘Hey Bear’ in a calm voice..” More advice here: https://vtfishandwildlife.com/node/257
