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Message: [QUOTE="JS, post: 3988959, member: 6"] In April we had a large bear hanging around our property for a week or so. First in 25 years of living here in Fairfield County. We do a lot of wild bird feeding. I had seven feeders out on the deck, atop 8-foot PVC pipes, bracketed to the deck railing at various points. Also, a large metal bin with bags of bird seed inside. [CENTER] [ATTACH type="full" alt="1623590806613.png"]67979[/ATTACH] [/CENTER] That slanted roof opens upward, but has latches. I woke one morning to find it pushed up from the middle into a tent shape, which freed the front doors. Seed bags broken into. Was baffled. What could have the strength to do that? Maybe a big raccoon could have a go at it if he didn''t have to sit on the same roof he was lifting. Wife suggested a bear, which I thought highly unlikely after all these years of seeing none. So I bolted down the roof. Didn't need it to open, given the front doors. A couple mornings later, doors hanging open anyway. Latches sprung, a heavy seed bag dragged halfway down the lawn, 40 yards or so. So I brought the bags into the garage. Next morning several of the PVC pipes down, brackets broken, feeders violated. OK, a bear. Nothing else could've done that. That night, Mrs. JS saw him, casually walking (lumbering, she said) along outside the front door. Big. Longer than my long coffee table and waist high. Pipes restored, but only one used for a while, and the feeders on that brought inside overnight. Now Mr. Bear seems to have moved on, but I'm still only using that one pole until November, when I understand he'll be sleeping in. So now, we're seeing lots of reports on the news of bear sightings in Fairfield County. Greenwich a couple of days ago, Trumbull, etc. We didn't report ours. Didn't want him bothered by animal control or trigger happy neighbors or anyone else. He's welcome to the seed, but feeding him and repairing after his sloppy eating habits was a bit of a pain. Friends living north of Hartford have been seeing them forever, but not down here. We do live on the edge of a forest, and my bird feeding was on the profligate side, so we were a must-stop on the chow hunting trail. Why now? My son, a veterinary tech, theorizes COVID reduction in human activity caused the bears to start expanding their territory southward out of the Berkshires region. Sounds plausible to me. [/QUOTE]

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