Written by Derek Bissett
There will be kids here on the weekend. We'll need some juice.
No problem. With juice equipment ready in the barn I head out to an apple tree I know is loaded with fruit.
Nothing. No. Two apples still up there.
What? The tree is leaning at an odd angle and there are long, deep scratch marks on the bark. My mystery visitor has been back.
I suspected regular bear visits all Fall. Usually there are lots of apples lying on the grass, dropped by the trees for various reasons. This year they have been all cleaned up every day. It isn't the work of my three deer friends who pass through regularly. They find a fallen fruit and take one bite before moving on to the next one, leaving a scatter of apples each with a neat white hollow facing up. Not the blue jays. They peck a hollow easily identified by peck marks and depth. Not the coyotes I can hear yipping at night regularly. They will have other prey in mind. Raccoons would hardly topple a tree.
Of course there were those large black steaming piles full of seeds. And a neighbour farmer did come into the yard earlier, very agitated, with his few words of English “Bear. No children” pointing to his blueberry field. My visiting grandchildren would have gone to the field immediately of course. Who could resist an invitation like that.
It's been a long time coming back. When we moved here forty years agoso the kids could have 4H animals, the bush had just been cleared and all the animals and birds had disappeared, their habitat gone. Any animals were rare and it was laughable to think of bears in Langley. They lived over the river, didn't they, and rumour had it that they swam over every year to pick up their supply of corn for the winter.
However the animals have been coming back over the years despite the accelerating pace of development in Langley. We have been fortunate to have a ravine and creek together with a large tract of undisturbed bush nearby, as well as being surrounded by protected farmland now mostly in blueberries. The bear must think a miracle has brought his habitat back.
Then a few years ago I went out one Sunday morning and met an apparition. I had never seen a white deer and it took a heartbeat to realize she was real standing among the apple trees wondering about my intentions; unlike my other friends who are used to my sharing their place and are quite tolerant of my repeatedly telling them to eat the apples whole instead of taking a single bite. She looked serenely unaware of how beautiful she was. To my delight she appeared several times after that and I hoped she had come to stay. Then one day I was shocked to hear that she had been shot.
Having lived for several years in a community which got a lot of its food supply from the abundant wildlife around I think I can understand the impulse to take from Nature's bounty. But now there is a cost to pay in places like ours where there is so little natural life and our children know animals only as cute caricatures in movies. Will they grow up failing to understand that the animals have a life of their own with their own needs and instincts independent of the character we place on them. I think that would be a loss. We learn something about ourselves not having left behind that part of us that belongs to the natural world. Some of our own instincts have to be kept in check and some to be celebrated if we are to survive.
As for the bear, I hope to meet him or her one day on our travels and I'll offer the same recognition that I do to my other wild friends; that I understand this was their place first and I'm glad they are back.