For scale, I’d say the distance from the x on the right to the x on the left is a mile at most.

(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 18)

If there is one area in which I’ve shown the most growth over the past, say, twenty years, it is in the area of wildlife.

Growing up in Queens, New York, the most wild animal we’d come across was a stray cat.

(One time we were taking an evening walk and it was dark out and a cat came around the corner and did that thing where it arched its back and it hissed at us and if I had to guess I’d say that’s probably where my fear of cats came from.)

What? No, I’m not scared of cats. Who told you that?

Anyway, when I moved here, I started to see bunnies on a regular basis and that was something else.

I’ll get into some of the other wildlife I’ve encountered, but I don’t want to bury the lead here:

This week there was a bear in my neighborhood.

I’ve been waiting patiently for this to happen, to be honest.

Bears have been spotted in surrounding towns and I figured it was only a matter of time before there was a sighting in our city.

I just didn’t expect it would be right in our neighborhood.

There was video of the bear captured a couple of streets away, and people reported two other sightings to police - one of which was on the street behind ours. So I took the liberty in that picture above of mapping out the bear’s path.

I’ve marked my house with a J (that stands for John’s House) and I put x’s where the bear was sighted. I wanted to put little ‘Family Circus’ dashes to show the path the bear might have taken to get from one x to the next, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that. (You can do it yourself and imagine you’re a bear! That seems like a fun activity.) Suffice to say: The first spotting was the x all the way on the right, and then it moved to the left.

But I think the real story here is how well I’ve handled this. I’m not letting it change my life the way I would if there was a mouse in the house or a raccoon in my yard.

I’m telling you: I’ve grown - last summer a groundhog ran right under my chair when I was sitting outside by the middle school waiting for my daughter to finish riding her bike and I did not freak out.

I imagine I’d handle a bear the same way.

Notes

*I mean, the reality is I can’t think about this too much otherwise I would never leave the house. Especially considering I have to get out to run, and I have to put out the compost for Friday morning. That’s like setting a bear trap, leaving food at the curb. Or maybe just inviting a bear to the house, thereby creating a human trap.

*I mentioned the compost - man do I love it. I think it’s just so great. Let me know if you’re interested in getting in on it.

*You can Like the Facebook page here, you can follow me on Twitter here. Thanks!

*Here’s a news story about the bear in the neighborhood in case you don’t believe me or want to see the quick little video someone in the neighborhood captured.

*And lastly, this week’s running update: I did my two shorter runs during the week - 30 minutes on Tuesday, and 45 minutes on Thursday when I was proud of myself for getting out before it rained. Later today I’m hoping to get out for an 80-minute run.