Critters

Some kind of a ruckus at the compost heap, after four in the morning, and I don't recognize the voices. Sleeping on the foam pad, down-pallet on the floor, windows open and the AC off, the forest bugs droning a dirge in the key of G. Hillbilly blues. But the voices are unfamiliar. I pull on some jeans and my house-slippers, which are very ratty moccasins that were once lined with a synthetic fur (I love them, they have a doubled leather bottom that prevents the penetration of almost anything) and grab my CSI LED flashlight, a gift from our light-bulb salesman, Andy, who plays a mean guitar, and head out the back door. It's a small black bear and a bobcat, fighting over the chicken bones and vegetables I'd used to make a stock. I hadn't seen a bear, one on one, for a very long time (1995) and only one other time (1985) had I ever seen a bobcat in the wild. My light bothered them, so I switched it off and retreated inside. I just wanted to know what it was, making the noise. I've had four close encounters with black bears, which might be above average, or about average, I don't know, I only know the bears I've seen. One in a dumpster in south Alabama, one eating berries outside of Telluride, one in that state forest in central Florida, and this last one, defending his turf, above the flood plain of the Ohio. I knew this bear was around, somewhere to the west. On my morel hunts I'd seen several rotted stumps that looked like they had exploded. When they're rotten enough, a bear will take them apart, looking for bugs and grub worms. Pretty definitive, when you factor in the paw prints. Also, I know the Naturalist for the state forest and she said that there was a 'nature cam' somewhere between me and the end of my country lane, maybe four miles, and it had recorded a bear. I'll be needing a book about bears, odd that I don't have one. Friends know that I feast on books about the natural history of anything, so they send them to me; these are, for the most part, from library book sales: Carma sent me, via D to save on postage, five at one time last year. But never a book on bears. Thinking about driving out my country lane to the west, I almost never drive that four miles of chip-and-seal, once or twice a year at the most, beautiful country, but all my business is in the other direction, and West Union is a dry town. Imagine that, in this day and age. The central hub in West Union, is the dairy store, which makes sense, fat people eating ice cream. I've taken to these incredible toasted vine-ripened tomato and mozzarella sandwiches in the morning, one of the best sandwiches ever, especially if you have the time to fry a few strips of bacon. Just saying.