BEAR!!!

we spent the weekend in winthrop to pass the time while mike is away and we drove back last night and saw a K 5 News van parked on our street. then this morning at the bus stop my neighbor told me we missed all the excitement: that yesterday a baby cub was up a tree right on our corner and the mother bear was in a tree a little ways down. anyways, apparently the dept. of wildlife shot the cub with a tranquilizer and it injured itself as it fell from the tree. so they took it and have it locked away while it heals and so the poor mom is probably pretty ticked--heck, i would be!
so today after carter got home from school i went out on our street to let the kids ride bikes. the whole time they were talking about the bear and how they could out-ride it if started chasing them. sydney even said something about having a really pointy sword and killing it (she's been hanging around carter too long)... anyways, right where the kids had just been, maybe 2 minutes earlier, the bear emerges from the trees and onto the street. the kids and the neighbor boy run to his house (just across from ours), and i watch it for a minute until it starts slowly running my direction! i run to my neighbors house and we watch it from her porch come down the street, walk up the hill on the right side of our house and then come back down on the left side. if we had gone to our house we would have seen it pass right through our back yard!!!
pretty exciting, and scary! the neighbor behind us said she saw a mountain lion a few months back walk through her back yard. we're right at the foot of Cougar Mtn. and as new homes go up i guess the wildlife start looking for new places to roam. it was on the news again tonight and the kids were pretty excited when a shot of our house popped up on the tv...
after todays experience i will be more watchful, even when the kids are in our own back yard! we have this amazing tree area that they have a fort in, but i think they will be heavily supervised from now on...