Canada Jane

We were watching TV last night and my husband just happened to look into the garden and saw a bear, yes a bear.

Now I know for those of you who live in western or northern areas of Canada this may not be unusual, but here we live near Belleville, ON only about 30km north of Lake Ontario, so we kept being told that bears do not come down this far south.

Well this one certainly did and he was pretty big, about 4ft tall. He hung around for a few minutes then wandered off.

I managed to get some not very good pics. It was getting dark and I was shaking. But here they are.

Member123

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

he is gorgeous, from a safe distance obviously. I'm sure you couldnt believe it. I have a cousin lives in Bellevile, I will tell her to keep an eye out for it

tracey.d

My goodness!!! I got excited when I looked out of my house and saw a fox walk past my house

That is so cool

johnnyc

Cool pics Jane!!!!,i'll have to keep the dog inside at night now .
Have you seen the cougar yet tho'?.

Canada Jane

What, there's a cougar out there too?

I blame global warming!

thundercat600

bet you were relieved when if lumbered off on it's own!

one of my 2 cats is a great hunter and is constantly bringing in (dead & alive) mice, voles, moles, birds etc

we can't wait to see what happens when he comes face to face with a raccoon!!

daft batty

We keep our cat in at night now she is no longer at the top of the food chain. She wont always come in, and when she does shes a pain and dances round the bed allnight.

Jane, are you rural or town??? A bear lumbered into peterborough a few weeks back, the MNR man who traps the bears wasnt around that weekend so the OPP "directed" the bear out of the city.

Canada Jane

We are rural. I phoned the OPP last night and they told me to phone the bear reporting centre which I did. They just took details and said the local branch would be in touch.

We have been here over a year and this is the first time we have ever seen anything like this, probably the last too.

Notiaink...honest

Cool, well sort of, as long as its not a frequent visitor.

Not sure who told you there were no bears around here, I had one come through my back yard that I got on video, and I had a close encounter once while biking the trails at the Vanderwater conservation area...they can really motor through the brush like its nothing...that sped me up a bit I can tell you!

Plus I heard that last year a few school busses were taking a diversion so the kids could see a bear up a tree near my road(!!!), Hell, there were even reports of a cougar on airport road in the hills near me last week, although I doubt whether its for real. People see a cougar on the county, and all of a sudden every half seen beige deer and dog becomes a "cougar". The one on the county seems real enough though. They pass a bylaw outlawing exotic pets, and all of a sudden a cougar thats not afraid of humans is seen running around the rednersville road area and beyond. Coincidence? No, I dont think so either.


Have you seen one of these yet?

Me neither, but the wife tells me there was one in our yard last month.

Notiaink...honest

My money is heavily on the racoon. Thats why people dont let their cats out at night.

thundercat600

you had me wondering for a bit then! i'm assuming you're in ON now, but peterborough's a city that's about 30miles east of me here in the UK!! they had a couple of dogs on the loose last weekend that were savaging other dogs but I hadn't heard of any bears on the loose!!
we've also been having reports of a "big black cat" for some years in this area (along with other places in the UK), but no hard, tangible evidence yet!

thundercat600

so's our money! we said it jokingly but we don't know much about raccoons and their habitat and how much of a pest or not they are
do they come willingly into (sub)urban areas foraging in the bins etc like the "urban" foxes we now get towns in the UK?

hot wasabi peas

I was gonna say!

Plus in a lot of areas, a lot of people just do not like cats at all and see them as free game or vermin to shoot at, poison, etc. and then there are those budding serial killers... it's 'people' that made my decision to keep my cat inside, not the wildlife.

dbd33

They're a huge problem in urban areas. You can kill one a day all year and still not keep up. The situation in Toronto is dire and made worse by a bylaw requiring that rotting food be placed in "green bins" - raccoon accessible containers.

thundercat600

my 2 have been extremely lucky to get to 12 years old and only have 1 broken leg and a few minor wounds & scratches between them in all those years (mind you, i'm sure billy doesn't have anything like 9 lives left!! )
to lose one or both of them to human influence would just be too sad