I put the end-of-the-day produce in the cooler in the cellar and drove up to the front of the house. I grabbed a pot of chopped San Marzano tomatoes out of the back of the pickup and took them into the kitchen. I was heading back out to the truck to bring in a small box of grade B Kennebec potatoes I was planning on having for dinner when, through the glass storm door, I saw its big black shape sauntering across the gravel of the driveway not 25 feet from the door. Darcy the Brave, inside and on her pillow near the door, saw the animal in the same moment and began barking.

“Son of a bitch!” I said and turned to find the shotgun.
I usually have a couple of 12-gauge birdshot shells in a short-shouldered drinking glass here on my desk. I grabbed them and slipped one into my short’s pocket and one into the barrel of the single shot Remington. There is no “safety” on the gun, just the need to cock the hammer before pulling the trigger. At the glass door again, I snapped the barrel shut and helped my wife direct Darcy into the living room before opening the door in my pursuit. Almost dark, a few more minutes until dark, wait, there’s TWO of them, twins, identical sized black bears, full-grown but still traveling together. Two. I felt surrounded. Encouragingly, the line, “We’re paratroopers, we’re supposed to be surrounded,” came to mind. From their position in the yard, I could tell they had just come from the woodshed where, no doubt, they had been sniffing for honey, or honeybee brood, as their memory was probably kicking in thoughts of the wonderful meals they had there last spring as they ate my two starter nucs full of bees and brood and honey. While there was bee equipment in the shed this visit, there was nothing to eat, and they were crossing the yard, next to the tractor now, a slow gait and unafraid, and I thought, they must have seen me drive up in the Tacoma and they just didn’t care. Didn’t care? Well OK then.

I did not have a target yet, and the mind is racing. You don’t shoot bear with skeet powder and the bears were so shiny and black and beautiful it is a remarkable thing but I cannot feel safe around them, and I was immediately thinking of the thirty beehives just down my lane and if the electric fence was working properly or if it had shorted out because I have not had time to weed whack around the yard below the charged wires to prevent grasses from shorting the system. Of course not. And now here they were. And the grasses didn’t grow for months with the drought and now with rain and sun and rain the weeds grew like, well, like the weeds they are.

Hopefully a couple blasts will make them, Twinkle and Dinkel, think twice before settling in too close to this working apiary.

I had a pile of stacked firewood somewhere in their direction, and I pulled a bead on the pile and fired into the firewood butts.

Now in this front yard there are other valuable non-targets I had to be aware of and keep a clear mind, what with the tractor and skid steer and electric utility pole with the meter and the electric line itself slung through the dense woods, and with my daughter’s car parked here as she is a city folk now.

All well and as I walked through the darkness now away from the house I could just make out the white shape of an erratic boulder dropped in the woods before any trees grew and I took aim again after pulling back the hammer, then popped the barrel open and clicked out the spent shell.

I was hoping these two displays of human frailty would be a significant and sufficient motivation to move the twins, Dinkel and Twinkle, along long enough for me to fortify the bee yard and complete the honey harvest, of which activity I am well behind.

Good luck bears and don’t hurry back. It’s the season and there are lots of bowmen asking, daily, about you.