Monday, August 5, 2013

Wild Kingdom, Cottage Style

My sister and I drove into town after dinner at the cottage on Saturday night to pick up a few groceries and spotted a bear on the side of the road.

I manoeuvred the car closer to where he was and tried to get a better photo.  I didn't have much luck.


The bear was moving pretty quickly and didn't seem to care that we were there, although I was sure he was deliberately trying to avoid having his picture taken.

I was trying to drive the car along the road beside him and take a picture at the same time, while arguing and giggling about how fast, how close, window up or down, etc. with my sister.  This is the best of the photos I took:

Then I noticed farther down the road, a family of turkeys was crossing the road.

"It's like an episode of Wild Kingdom around here!", I said to my sister, which made us giggle some more.  "Or the opening credits of the Partridge Family!"

When we got to the spot where the turkeys had crossed, we noticed a bunch of cottagers watching the turkeys from behind the decorative iron fence on their property. I rolled down my window to caution them that there was a bear on the other side of the road.  My major concern was that this might be a growing cub and his mama bear might not be far away (one never wants to get in between a mama bear and her baby, that could be extremely dangerous).  Did they heed my advice and stay clear of the wild animal? Noooo.  They rushed out onto the road to get a better look.

By this time, the bear had moved farther into the forest so we gave up watching and continued the drive into town.  On the way back, we came across another group of people further down the road, staring into the trees on the opposite side of the road, clearly watching the bear (although we didn't spot him this time).  Half of them were barefoot, several were young children, none of them showing much common sense about being so close to a potentially dangerous wild animal.  Luckily, the bears on our cottage road have yet to do anything harmful to humans and hopefully they never will.

On this occasion, the bear, being the smarter of the two species, kept going and stayed well out of their way.

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