We have a bear problem. I don’t mean just our family, but all who are living here in the woods. This time a year, you can’t leave birdfeeders up because the bears will destroy them to eat the contents. This year the bears have added a new trick. Each night we carefully take down the bird feeders and put them inside. The bears can smell the grain that the birds scatter on the ground while feeding. We use simple shepherds hooks to put the birdfeeders up. This year the bears are finding the empty shepherds hooks and bending them over to see if there’s anything at the top of the shepherds’ hooks. The bears are obviously big and strong – in my opinion, dumb too – so they have no problem bending the shepherds’ hooks into a 90° angle. I thought after they bent a couple of shepherds hooks into pretzel shapes, they would learn there’s nothing on the top of them. However, I was wrong. So, each night we not only have to take birdfeeders in but shepherds hooks out of the ground and lay them down so the bears can inspect them.
