A truly magical experience between man and bear.
Regular readers of this Blog will know that Naked Capitalism is a daily read for this author. Yves Smith always includes her ‘antidote du jour’ picture of animals. How Yves finds these is beyond me but her antidote of the 14th November really was special. The original author of the piece, Tom Sears, is encouraging the distribution of his story and pictures and it’s a pleasure to do so via Learning from Dogs.
Black bears typically have two cubs; rarely, one or three. In 2007, in northern New Hampshire, a black bear Sow gave birth to five healthy young. There were two or three reports of sows with as many as 4 cubs, but five was, and is, very extraordinary. I learned of them shortly after they emerged from their den and set myself a goal of photographing all five cubs with their mom – no matter how much time and effort was involved. I knew the trail they followed on a fairly regular basis, usually shortly before dark. After spending nearly four hours a day, seven days a week, for more than six weeks, I had that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and photographed them. I used the equivalent of a very fast film speed on my digital camera. The print is properly focused and well exposed, with all six bears posing as if they were in a studio for a family portrait.
I stayed in touch with other people who saw the bears during the summer and into the fall hunting season. All six bears continued to thrive. As time for hibernation approached, I found still more folks who had seen them, and everything remained OK. I stayed away from the bears as I was concerned that they might become habituated to me, or to people in general, and treat them as `approachable friends’. This could easily become dangerous for both man and animal.
After Halloween, I received no further reports and could only hope the bears survived until they hibernated.
This spring, just before the snow disappeared, all six bears came out of their den and wandered all over the same familiar territory they trekked in the spring of 2007.
I saw them before mid-April and dreamed nightly of taking another family portrait, a highly improbable second once-in-a-lifetime photograph.
On 25 April 2008, I achieved my dream.
When something as magical as this happens between man and animal, Native Americans say, “We have walked together in the shadow of a rainbow”. And so it is with humility and great pleasure that I share these exhilarating photos with you. Do pass them on!
By Paul Handover
I went for a bike ride this afternoon ….. there is a super 6km circuit that goes from our village Unterthingau along a country road, up past a farm with magnificent views over the Allgäu countryside then along to Oberthingau and back home ….. On the way there are horses and cows munching happily in fields and of course the snow-capped Alps in the background …. The exercise and the fresh air were great, but during the ride I was struck by a couple of things. On the skyline in the direction of Kempten was – as usual – a line of a dozen wind turbines. All were – as usual – immobile, save one which was doing its best to turn languidly, and hardly succeeding.
kitchen calling “Riverford coming through!”, he was then delighted to report: “there are three sweetcorns”, there having been two in previous weeks!
On Saturday, he marched into a field of sweetcorn and, as if he had done it for years, went straight to a plant and, explaining what he was doing, tested the crop for size and ripeness and picked it by breaking it off like an expert. He then handed it to me and proceeded to pick many more of them. When I asked him how he knew what to do, all was revealed: “I saw it on the telly!”.
Learning from Dogs 