Bear in the Air

Bears chomp their way through over 20,000 calories a day at this time of year, as they get ready for hibernation. Finding a tree full of apples is a bonus, for a bear.

One of our neighbours was driving home (he lives near Dorset) the other day. The old wild apple tree at the edge of the road gave a sort of a shake as he approached, so he slowed down. Stopped. Rolled down his window, and said "Hello." The branches parted, and Mr. Bear stuck his head out of the leaves, about 15 feet away.

Having said "Hello," the bear went back into the depths of the tree to concentrate on his apple snack. Luckily, Charles had his camera with him in the truck. He spoke to the bear, again, and sure enough out came the head, a polite bear, wondering what Charles wanted. Thanks for sending us the picture!


Another guest, Herman, sent us his photos of a bear near his house, well to the south of here! Also in an apple tree.

We have a lot of apple trees scattered through our back fields. The ones close to the resort, by the office for example, we take care to keep picking the apples -- we have some wonderful apple pie apples here, and lots of crab apples that make a wonderful jelly. Some just create a tasty applesauce. What we don't use ourselves, we shake down. The deer like that... cleaning up any windfalls.

And yes, bear visits are the reason we try to remove that extra fruit. Our apple trees aren't very big, you see. And bears can be. A bear will climb into an apple tree, but being big can only climb so far. The bear will settle comfortably as high as he can go, then pull the branches in close enough to clean off the fruit. Often this will snap the branches. When you have enough branches snapped off, they form a platform, and you (as a bear) can climb even higher, and reach even more branches. It creates a mess in the tree top, called a "bear nest".

Carol took a very dim view of this happening to her ornamental crabapple trees by the office a few years ago, when Momma bear and her cubs were playing jungle gym in the tree, snapping branches all over the place. She plunked the ladder into place, and climbed up, then got into the tree herself and went as high as she could, shaking down the fruit, and picking what wouldn't fall.

In the office, the phone rang. It was Carol. "Need a little help, here," she reported.

So she did. While she was up in the tree, Momma and the two cubs had returned, and were happily sitting under the tree -- under Carol -- cleaning up the apples as fast as she could shake them down.