{"id":1319,"date":"2012-06-05T10:32:37","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T04:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2012-06-05T10:32:37","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T04:32:37","slug":"a-bear-sighting-with-a-literary-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/05\/a-bear-sighting-with-a-literary-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bear Sighting, With a Literary Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So this evening as I was finishing a salmon dinner (note the subtle motif about to emerge), a bear showed up in my yard&#8211;actually he kind of shambled up. Ever the amateur shutterbug, I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos. It&#8217;s funny (not ha ha funny, though) that in my novel about to debut, <em>The Bird Saviors<\/em>, there&#8217;s a part about a cranky polygamist father, nicknamed Lord God, who tells his daughter that the bears come down from the high country during droughts, to raid outlying homes for food. (<em>Raid<\/em> is perhaps a term best used for barbarians at the gate, but the bears are hungry. One ripped open my shed last year to get at the garbage cans inside. Now I pay for a bear-proof dumpster. You get the picture.) We&#8217;re in the middle of two-year drought, and have had bears mangle our bird feeders, multiple times.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s like a chapter out of the book, life imitating art and all that. I nicknamed him Billy. How original! An artsier sort would no doubt name him Balthazar, BoBama, or Beethoven. Of course I could name him John Irving, who has a new novel out right now. But I won&#8217;t. He can name his own bear.<br \/>\nFor those who like their wildlife info particular, this is actually a Black Bear\u2014<em>Ursus americanus<\/em>\u2014though his coat is obviously a shaggy brown, which is common in these here parts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/BearInYard.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1320\" title=\"BearInYard\" src=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/BearInYard-682x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"409\" height=\"614\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this evening as I was finishing a salmon dinner (note the subtle motif about to emerge), a bear showed up in my yard&#8211;actually he kind of shambled up. Ever the amateur shutterbug, I grabbed my camera and snapped a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/05\/a-bear-sighting-with-a-literary-twist\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9,24,29,38],"tags":[198],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bears","category-books","category-climate-change","category-photography","category-the-west","category-writing","tag-wildlife-photos"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}