Surprise Visitor From Up the Mountain

We were enjoying the nice weather today and had the door from the living room to the screened-in porch open so the cats could enjoy some fresh air too. Around noon, we heard Little Lu go running at top speed from the porch into the back bedroom where he had apparently dived under the bed. Cheryl looked outside to see what had scared LL and found this medium size bear walking near our birdfeeders. He surprisingly didn't show any interest in the feeders and sauntered on past our garden to check out the weather station sensors.

He appears to be a well fed young bear, we're guessing a male due to lack of any accompanying cubs. He would be the right size for a 2yr old male.

After using our newly installed wooden steps to descend through our yard, he slowly made his way across our driveway.

As he approached our mailbox, he stopped to scratch his itchy head up against his front leg.

With the itch taken care of, he headed on towards our mailbox.

He gave the mailbox a sniff test and decided it held no food.

Having lost interest in the mail, he crossed the road to check the blackberries.
A cute shot of him sitting down to check out the snacks.

He seemed to be having a hard time finding enough ripe ones, as most of them are still red.

Had to take time out for another scratch.

Since the berries weren't that tasty apparently, he headed on down the road.

Bye-bye Mr. Bear.
We have seen bears in the neighborhood around dusk before (when the lighting isn't good for pictures), but this was a pretty rare visit at high noon. The entire trip across our yard only took about 3 minutes, so we were lucky to catch it. He certainly looked healthy enough and he clearly is getting enough to eat. We're happy to live in a place where humans can co-exist with such magnificent creatures.

Getting back to Little Lu, its now been almost two hours since the bear visit and he is still in hiding. After some searching around, Cheryl got this picture of him hiding under the guest room bed. We think this bear encounter made a pretty strong first impression on this kitty. Moki, on the other hand, seemed unimpressed by the whole thing and was still hanging around out on the porch when we spotted the bear.