Then the morning of November 6th, I got awake and thought
it was daylight because the window
by our bed had light showing through. But wait a minute,
the clock said 1:30, so I looked out the door window
and it was dark. Well that meant only one thing,
the motion lights on the side of the house were on.
So I got up and looked out and yep,
there was a black bear.

He was laying at the foot of the tree, cleaning
up the crumbs of suet and bird seed the birds
and squirrels had scattered around.
And then that quick he left. So I figured
he didn't stay long since there was
nothing to eat, as the last bear
had cleaned out the garbage can.
WRONG!

It was around 9 AM when we got up, dressed,
ate breakfast, did our recycling. Then
Joe went about his business
blowing leaves over more flowers and cleaning
up the yard. I was busy doing dishes, etc,
when he came in and said:
"Come with me, I have something to show you".
We went outside, our boxer Lilah right beside us.
Joe pointed in the direction of the mountain and said:
"Do you see that black and white thing
laying up in there. "Yes" was my reply.
He said "It is your penquin. HUH?
Now everyone knows what a penquin looks like.
I have two weighted down, heavy duty
plastic penquins that I put in front
of the carport for winter.
They are two foot tall and weigh
about ten to twelve pounds.

We walked about thirty yards up into the woods
and picked it up. I couldn't believe it,
no bears have ever picked them up before.
The only thing we can figure is he wanted
to play with it, like Little Bear who
was here several weeks ago
played with the recycling can.
We could see the scratches on it, and several claw
holes pierced in the the body. Joe set
it back in place, but we were still in disbelief.
I went back into the house to finish my work,
and a few minutes later in comes Joe.
And once again he said "come here".
"Uh Oh" Again we went outside.
This time he showed me a ripped up
grass seed bag. He found it across our little
dirt road in a neighbor's woods. It was EMPTY.
There was no grass seed laying anywhere.
They eat grass seed? We haven't a clue.
I did a search and it says they eat grass,
seeds, berries, bark off trees and more...
but did not actually say they eat grass seed.

Then we went into the carport where the two penquins
are now in place in front, and also where
my car is parked, because Joe wanted to show
me where this bag of grass seed was stored.
He had the bag in the grass seed spreader
hanging on a hook on the wall, in front of my car.
The spreader was still hanging, so the bear squeezed past the car,
and just lifted the bag of seed right
out of the spreader and walked over to the
neighbor's woods to enjoy his meal.
There were no marks on the car,
and nothing else disturbed. I don't know which
bear it was because I did not have enough time
to look him over when I saw him, but we
now know he was here for quite awhile
before I did see him.