Someone didn't get the hibernation memo

I’ll admit our condo complex has a sort of Stepford quality to it. 

From the outside, the units all look pretty much the same unless you live here and are able to detect the subtle differences. Funnily, inside they’re very different – different layouts, some are all one floor, some like ours have an upstairs. And they’re also very Papa, Mama, Baby Bear sizes, some being downright huge while others are more modest.

          To sum up, the appearance is very tame, looking far removed from any hint of what may be going on in the woods that surround us.

          Yesterday, on a walk to our mailbox with Mamie, she became very reluctant to turn down one of the streets. I saw nothing ahead; it was cold and the only reason to be out and about was if you had a dog. I persuaded her forward and then saw someone come out and cross his front yard. He’s the dog dad of Finnegan, a West Highland terrier so adorable that the first time I saw her tied up in front I thought they’d put out a yard ornament.

          We greeted each other and then he told me to look behind me. I turned and saw nothing.

          “No,” he said, “look over there on the ground.”

          A pitch-black mound of something lay on the tree belt.

          “Know what that is?” he said.

          “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

          “I’m pretty sure that’s bear poop.”

          When we moved in here, I’d been told of bear sightings, but even at our old house, surrounded by acres of woods, in the twenty years there we’d never seen a bear, and I was skeptical.

I walked over. Those hours of watching TV shows about homesteaders in Alaska had come home to roost. The producers of those programs have an inexplicable love of filming piles of bear scat, usually fitting at least one example into every show.

I looked more closely, nodded, and said, “Yup. Me too.”