Bear There

Saturday morning brought a surprise in the form of a bear in the back yard. I spied him from the kitchen window and raced for the camera.

The animal was moving fast, and I ended up going outside to get photos. The first shot I took through the kitchen window, but the rest I snapped as the bear went down the driveway and then into the neighbor's woods.

When I downloaded the photos, I realized the bear has something stuck to its mouth. At first, I thought it was drool, but I enlarged the photos and determined it to be something like surgical tape or something along those lines.

I checked with the local wildlife authorities to be sure the bear would be ok and was told that so long as the item wasn't over the bear's head, it would likely rub against a tree to remove whatever was sticking to it.

The tape didn't catch my gaze when I was taking photos because the bear was full of ticks and I was noticing those instead. Otherwise, the animal looks fairly healthy, not a lot of mange, anyway.