that is a ruler, marking 8 inches across in length. it's a pile of black bear scat about 75 feet from our garbage cans, in the direction of the woods, with characteristic "late summer" berry seeds throughout it (our woods are full of blackberries this time of years).

some of you see this nearly every day (matt, sara?); some of you have never seen it before (like me!); some of you have been looking for it (dad!) on walks when visiting.

as my friend amy remarked, i would not have been happy about this a year ago. i probably would have been to lowes and back already with some sort of "locking the windows and doors from bear" mechanism and maybe (if my parents weren't building across the street) started looking at homes for sale in the city again.

but now, i'm glad to see some sort of proof that the black bear does live and roam out here.

so, who out there hunts?