Every fall, we have an unruly punk that comes into our neighbourhood and knocks over garbage cans and gleefully spreads garbage around driveways. He's likes to hide in the darkness of night and is rarely seen by day. We will only know that he's been around by the utter destruction left in his wake, which you will discover the next morning when you are late for an appointment and your carport is covered with your household garbage from the previous week. He is mostly likely to show up on the night before garbage day when your garbage is filled with all sorts of goodies that he has clearly enjoyed.
I am bear aware and I should know better. All summer, I have been browbeating my family to compost everything that that we can in our house to cut down on the garbage that we produce and so I could have the compost for my poor, neglected garden. I am very pleased at how my compost turned out and I was happy to add it as mulch to my flower bed when I winterized it. One of my fall routines is to can peaches and pears for the year. It was with bears in mind that I thought I should put the peach pits and peels from 40 lbs of peaches in the garbage can (double-bagged) rather than in the compost pile. This was a mistake. Our neighborhood bear had a feast that night and I was grateful that the bear ate most of the peels because there is nothing worse than picking up slimy, half-eaten peach peels. As it was, I still had to pick up a week's worth of diapers and other delightful refuse in my carport. The irony of picking up garbage by hand on garbage day was not lost on me.
Four days later, the pears were ready to can because peaches and pears will never be ready at the same time. I also had a box of apples from my mom's apple tree that we had to deal with because the fruit flies were starting to invade. This time, I learned my lesson and I buried all the pear peels, apple peels and cores in the compost pile.
"Take that, Bear!", I thought to myself.
He did.
The next morning, we were doing some winterizing in our yard and I discovered bear scat right beside my compost pile. When I looked closer, I realized that our bear had completely flattened my compost pile and had dug through and eaten all of the kitchen scraps (except for the banana peels), pear peels, and apple peels that he could find. It would appear that now I am inadvertently running a soup kitchen for bears. So for now, our garbage is staying inside and I'm leery of using my compost for the rest of the season. If my house smells, blame the neighbourhood punk.
