• |

    Meet Bernard, Our Neighborhood Bear

    ByCaroline

    **You’ll need to click through to my website if you want to see the videos, FYI.**

    Do you remember at the end of August I shared about a bear mother and cub in our neighborhood? As far as I know, they haven’t been around since (unless the cub is tucked away somewhere and this bear is indeed that mother), but we’ve had a very, very regular visitor I’ve named Bernard — as you do.

    And yes, there he is standing outside for all the world to see in the middle of the day, not at dawn or dusk, as is more typical.

    Here he is, being neighborly, taking out the trash.

    While I haven’t see him in person (most of these pictures are from our culdesac chat that really heats up on trash day), I’ve seen evidence of him in our front and back yards. Last week he clawed at our apple tree, pulling down branches and some of the last meager apple hangers-on.

    The next morning, Bernard (Bernadette?) successfully broke into my strap-secured garbage barrel and did a bit of fence demolition. (That rickety old thing has needed to be replaced for years. I guess he’s started the work of tearing it down early!)

    Now the garbage lives in the garage.

    Bernard does most of his creeping around (according to various neighborhood cameras) between ten pm and one am.

    He’s very agile.

    Last Sunday, as I got home from church, I saw our neighborhood text chat was furiously buzzing. Bernard was, in the middle of the day, passing from backyard to backyard. At 530pm he was up this tree, roaring and breathing (it’s a pretty terrifying sound!). As I watch this again, it looks like Bernard isn’t the one growling. Does that mean there was another bear around?! I’m going to believe it was a dog.

    He’s especially partial to the backyard across the street from us. Here he is bear-handling a tree.

    If my tone sounds playful and light, that’s intentional. I’ve been kinda scared; I’m doing what I gotta do to roll with the situation. We are all fully aware this is a dangerous animal. We all also know that hundreds of bears across the state are starving because of this atrocious drought and last year’s meager snowpack. (Mountain snowpack recharges our rivers and aquifer and allows food for wildlife to grow. When we get poor snowfall, on top of a two-decades-plus mega drought, the animals do what they can to survive.) We live in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, which can be bear country. In other words, moving here, we knew this could be a possibility. We’re in that stretch at the end of summer / beginning of fall when bears are working to fatten up before hibernation. Fish and Game came to our last neighborhood meeting and said to stay alert and secure garbage, but as long as the bears aren’t threatening anyone, they will leave them be. (Relocation often ends badly for the bears).

    So, I’ve taken to carrying bear spray on my walks. I’m only running on the trail along the busy road between now and hibernation (probably in mid-November). I’m hoping the almost six inches of rain we got in our neighborhood in September (!!! The wettest September on record for Albuquerque!!!) means El Niño is going to womp us with snow later this winter. We could — all of us, humans and creatures alike — really use the relief.

    A bonus: this lovely lady who regularly leaves nose smudges on the sliding glass doors.

  • Writing Links

    ByCaroline

    “Having gone through the editing process on both sides, here are some suggestions for processing the feedback, coming up with a plan to tackle the changes, and executing a revision in an efficient and effective way.”
    How to Utilize Feedback to Improve Your Manuscript :: Nathan Bransford

    “The older I get, the more convinced I become that it’s a critical life-skill – at least if you’re roughly the sort of person I am – to get better at disappointing other people.”
    Be A Disappointment :: The Imperfectionist

    I am always, always interested in how others approach their work. It is a reminder there’s not one way to be creative or go about making our art.
    Six writers on the most surprising parts of their writing routines :: Lit Hub

    “Reading aloud forces me to consider every word I’ve written and say it. When I do so it is less my critical faculties that are making judgements, as it is my ear. I can hear when the rhythm of my work is off, or catch when a particular phrase makes no sense, when word repetitions have crept in, and even when I am repeating myself. It is as if — when reading aloud — my story telling goes back to its original format, me telling you a story. Which is to say I trust my ear more than my eye.”
    On Paper :: Avi

    Food for thought for those of us asking for honest feedback on our writing.
    I Don’t Want an Honest Critique :: Darcy Pattison

    “Writers fear querying for all kinds of justifiable reasons. Rejection stings! The query process is convoluted and time consuming, not to mention inexact and opaque. It feels like every little detail matters, when in fact you can still make the team if your toes weren’t perfectly pointed on that last toe touch. It’s terrifying that most of the process is completely out of your control. That writing a “good book” won’t guarantee you success. Not to mention that querying is only the first round, and you still have to make it through submissions to editors and then actually releasing the book. Saying I would prefer not to makes logical sense.”
    What if You’re Scared of Querying? :: Agents + Books

    Gross.
    Unsealed Files Show Open AI/Microsoft Knew Copying Was Illegal and Could Hurt Authors :: Publishers Weekly