I took the photos of the bears on our play equipment. I was getting the boys (ages 3 & 4) ready for daycare in the morning. My mom (who lives downstairs) called me and said to look out the window at the playset. Ta-da! There they were. 4 black bears having a grand old time. You can see in a few of the photos that one of the bears is chewing on my son's fire truck. Occasionally, he would bite down on the button that would sound the siren. He would jump up and give it a strange look. But, it didn't scare him off. After about 20 minutes, I figured I had better scare them off so they wouldn't think our playset was a good place to return. I threw rocks and dirt clods at them. At first, they just sniffed the rocks and looked at me. I actually connected with one of them (finally) and they sauntered away. They left bite marks in the slide and in the toys. There are scratch marks in the wood.

Since then, my husband hooked up an air horn. That way, the boys can alert me if a moose or bear or porcupine or any other critter comes around.

This past summer [2007] we have had other groups of bears. One of them even peed in our driveway!