Well That Didn't Take Long

Our not so long local nightmare is over.  After a tire-popping, cooler-pilfering couple of days, our bear has been caught.  Emily heard the "clang" of justice about 10:30 last night as the door of the trap slammed shut on this bear's life of crime...the crime of...well...just being a bear.  Neta was also looking out the window about the same time, shining a flashlight at the cage and could see the many reflectors on it moving around.  It was official...we had a captured and caged bear on our hands.  Whew!

Book him, Danno!

He turned out to be bigger than we thought...

I called the DNR Ranger who'd dropped off the trap earlier that day to let him know that the bear was caught.  He told me he'd be on his way shortly but it would be a few hours as he was coming up from Waycross.  He said we didn't need to stay up (Are you kidding me?) as he could just hook up the trailer and drive off, but I was not about to miss seeing this bear ride off into the sunset...metaphorically speaking.

...and not happy.
I wonder if it would brighten his day to know the Cubs won the World Series?

As expected (and as you can see), in this world of social media, we had to get some pictures.  It's not "official" until you have pictures and someone else sees them.  Our contractor, Tracy, had texted me earlier in the evening and asked if the bear had been captured yet, so I let him know when it happened.  He and his family drove over to take a look.  The bear scratched, clawed, groaned, huffed, grunted and even lunged at us a few times.  Needless to say, we were quite pleased and impressed with the overall construction of the cage, despite how powerful the bear seemed to be.

He looks defeated.
I've gotta give Neta credit for taking this really cool picture.

The ranger showed up just before 2am.  He said the bear was much bigger than he was expecting.  We chatted for a few mins while I helped him hook up the trailer.  The bear continued huffing and grunting, even breathing/blowing his nose at us as we cranked up the stabilizers on each side.

Happy Trails!

So it looks as if our 15 minutes of local fame is quickly coming to an end.  We made the front page of the local paper (how did Trump get top billing?) and I'll be calling the reporter back to let her know that the bear has been caught, after which we'll fade into the oblivion of the paper's archives...somewhat happily and bear- free.

Front page!  And a pun no less!!!

Remember 11/02/16 as a 50/50 day in the ursine world.  The Cubbies won, but the Bear lost.  There was "panda"monium for both events.  We're just happy that our bear was taken alive and did not meet a grizzly end.  Sorry...are these puns unbearable?  I wanted to work in a political joke but did not want to "polar"ize our readers.

Until the next post...