Dr Kelly Fleming

The summer before I left for university, my parents decided to rent a cottage for the week about 6 hours north of our city.

The first night we were there, my Mum heard a noise outside the cottage so my Dad went out to investigate. He saw two black bears at the garbage dumpster next to our cottage.

The next day, Dad thought it would be fun to go for a drive to see if there were any other black bears nearby. Mum declined the trip. 😂

Dad and I headed out with the windows up and the doors locked and located a family of black bears not too far from the cottage. In cottage land, its not difficult to find dumpsters, especially 30+ years ago. We enjoyed watching the bears for a while. When one of them headed towards the car, Dad decided it was time to return to the cottage.

That same night, once again, they heard the bears at the dumpster. In hindsight, it wasn’t exactly the most brilliant idea – but Dad and I went out to watch them. There was a young bear there and the other was giving him food from the dumpster. When they stopped moving around the dumpster, my Dad grabbed me and we quickly headed into the cottage and locked the door and the windows. Not that THAT would have stopped them if they really wanted to follow us.

Needless to say, Mum was not pleased at that stunt and our bear watching expedition came to an abrupt end!