The bear

I've got a bear.  

There's quite a bit of wildlife around this farm; and some of it is big game.  The bear I saw is a 150lb or so black bear, and it was doing what I'd be doing if I were a bear:  eating salmon.  The orange lines on the map are where the salmon are right now; i've got salmon runs on both sides of my property.  We just got done with the pink salmon who came in large numbers; at least 5,000 died along the river curve that is north of my property; and we're now in the middle of the silver, coho, salmon run.  The pinks are small, 4 to 8lbs.  the coho are a bit larger; call it 6 to 12lbs.  So a single coho is a pretty good meal and there are hundreds of them, too.  

The straight line at the bottom of the photo is a surprise to me; I didn't know there was a salmon run possible there.  It's a very small stream on the other side of the old railroad bed from my farm, and right now it's stuffed full of coho.  The land on the other side is a pretty big swamp, and there's a family of beavers that live there and they have spent all their time converting the swamp into a series of pool-and-drops -- they build a dam, water backs up behind it forming a pool, and there's a small waterfall that drops into the next pool.  

Where you see the salmon is when they move from one pool to the other, swimming up and over the little beaver dam.   I started noticing salmon that were consumed in a different way than a bird would; scraps of flesh, bones eaten, some carcasses with the skin stripped off but the meat remaining.  

Have a good feast, bear.  Find all you need to make the sleep comfortable.