Photo taken a few years back from our enclosed sunroom

Our dog Riley gave my husband a gift for Father’s Day. No, I didn’t buy my husband a new shirt and slap on a gift tag that said, “To Dad, from Riley.” The dog performed an action of love on his own Sunday morning. Riley sounded a 6 a.m. furiously-loud alert that a bear was at the trash can.

The gift? Since the bear was scared off before it could pull open the trash can (somewhat secured by bungee cords), my husband didn’t have to spend an hour picking up trash strewn from our driveway down into the woods like usual. Good dog, Riley.

We like living in the country with an assortment of critters who visit. Besides the bears, we have many deer. (I’m sure that neighbors driving by have heard my early-morning rants to the now-absent deer: “You have the whole forest to nibble on; why do you insist on eating the hostas?!”)

We see a fox on a regular basis, and we’ve had raccoons, possums, and wild turkeys. On a nature cam in our woods, we’ve also captured snapshots of coyote and an eagle. Pretty cool, huh?

So yes, we do enjoy the wildlife, even considering the loss of plants, extra poop to clean up, and the necessity of trash pick-up sometimes.

But our relationship with the bears turned ugly this spring. My husband had decided to try his hand at bee-keeping. The hives had been set up for a couple weeks. The bees had settled in and had begun foraging in the Rose of Sharon bush at the edge of a porch.

Unlike the adorable Winnie the Pooh, real bears don’t just gently dip a finger into a hive to grab a taste of honey. They smash the hives and eat the bees and the larvae as well. During a prolonged two week period of rain, two bears came and did just that. What bees they didn’t eat likely drowned.

Honestly, I’m struggling to explain the emotions we went through over this. The bees weren’t pets, but we still felt miserable over their loss. We were angry, frustrated, and having watched part of the scene unfold, felt distressed and helpless.

The bears were just being bears, responding to instinct. We weren’t going to harm them over this. But let’s just say if they attempt to get into the new hives, they’ll have a “shocking” experience. I hope the current is strong enough to cause the bears to look at each other and say, “The heck with this. Let’s go empty the trash can.”

To my readers: Have you had an experience with nature’s backyard creatures that you will share?