This end of pregnancy business comes with a whole lot of insomnia. I’m in the final days of my third, and definitely last, go round with this child-making and I’ve got to say, it is just plain painful. For countless weeks I have found myself gracing the balcony at odd hours of the night. It’s nice and cool out there at two in the morning, which is when I most often feel like I have entered a sauna with a snowsuit on. The balcony is a fine place to do some observing of nighttime happenings, especially those in the animal kingdom.

Last week while I was on my perch the same bear wandered through at about 1:30 a.m. for a few nights in a row. There were rental folk and seasonal neighbors around for the holiday so I assume he was checking out the lay of the land and seeing who left garbage unsecured. He poked around my house a bit each night and fumbled with the bear-proof trash can once or twice, but moved on fairly quickly.

After a couple of nights the tiniest cat in our brood, Miss La Rue, decided that she didn’t care for this impostor one bit. Now Miss La Rue is a noisy, three pound brat, that thinks she is a grand lioness and prances about like her litter don’t stink. As the roughly four hundred pound bear meandered down the driveway on his nightly jaunt she began stalking him, which was pretty entertaining I must say. She then placed herself in front of the bear, nearly between his front paws and was essentially yelling at him. “Meeoooooowwwwww,” echoed in the quiet darkness. The bear could obviously not figure out what the tiny creature was that was trying to assault him and let out a grunt, turned tail, and ran right up a tree. This was becoming pretty hysterical from my safe spot fifteen feet off the ground.

Miss La Rue planted herself beneath the tree and continued her low meowing and growling while the bear clung tightly, hissing and spitting all the while. She was not relenting after twenty or so minutes and I became bored with the outdoor escapades and went inside.

The next morning it became clear that Miss La Rue had also become bored with the bear in the tree. When my husband went outside at 6:30 a.m. to leave for work he found a surprise. The passenger doors of the car and the truck were ajar. In the car there were muddy paw prints and some black fur on the seat, but like Goldilocks, he had just been trying this seat out and didn’t harm anything. The truck was a different story. The middle console had a bite mark in it and a tear, but had eventually been opened properly. The contents were scattered about. Apparently bears have no use for tools, wood putty, or vast amounts of spare change. They do have very muddy paws and do not wipe their feet politely.

I thought every speck of food had long since been removed from the cars. I am careful of this after years of horror stories about mangled cars. I had even lifted up the back seats in my own and vacuumed up the three thousand french fries from under there. What on earth had this bear been after? In the grass, behind our shed, the truth became clear. A Hershey bar and protein bar had escaped our notice in the middle console, but had not escaped the bear’s sense of smell. There was a matted down area with the telltale wrappers where my meandering friend had had himself a little pic-a-nic. In case you’re wondering, bears are terrible litter bugs.

The least he could’ve done was close the vehicle doors behind him.