If it’s been a tough year for people and plants, it has been equally tough for wildlife. Berries and acorns are smaller or nonexistent and everything is competing for these scarce resources.
Several times this year a bear–I am presuming it is the same one because wildlife tends to repeat behavior–has come to my pond for a drink. I have never seen it but my neighbors have and have told me about it.
Within a week or so of this photo which was taken in mid-August, I came home from work to find that the bear had decided to do much more than drink!
It was clear that an afternoon swim was on the agenda for the bear that day. Further, once it was in the pond, it ate all the pond plants, ripped my filter box open, chewed those plastic bioballs that I showed above (which I will henceforth always think of as “bear berries “), chewed up my plastic filters and sent my fish into hiding for over a week.
But it could have been worse! At least the fish survived! I haven’t seen the frog since the bear took its dip, however. I guess that was too much for him–he was clearly no longer king of the pond!
Gardendaze 