The Summer of the Bears, Hungry & Marauding

So in my corner of Colorado there was a bit of snow drought (March was dry), which caused the bears to come out of hibernation early, before there was food for them. Now there are roving gangs of hungry bears marauding across the countryside. We’ve seen two in our yard, one a big glossy black bruin who ripped open a hole in our woodshed door to get at the garbage cans stored inside, and another roan-colored youngster who gallops across our yard regularly. We love our bears but we love our cat more, and were briefly in a panic as we thought one of them had eaten Iris, but thankfully she showed up after being missing for a day. Here’s the damage to the woodshed, which I’ll have to repair later this week. The hole doesn’t look that big, but the bear did, maybe 250 lbs or so: