Lime is the one who is usually playing with me but here Lemon is tugging on my walking stick while Brandy walks by. In this years photos you will see our sticks. As well as for walking they are also a tool we are testing to keep playful bears at arms length. They really work.

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

As an illustration of how defined the edges of a female bears territory are, we had never seen Brandy at our cabin in the seven years we have been here until a few days ago. Until then, her western boundary was 150 meters to the east of the cabin, at the mouth of Char Creek. We see her from the cabin all the time and can usually walk to where she is in a few minutes. We have yet to see her along one half of the lake's shore. (Click on this text and scroll down to the last map on the page to see Brandy and Biscuit's ranging territories).

For the past several days there has been a very wet, cold storm battering us with high winds but the couple weeks previous was hot and dry. Almost all the bears have been down-river feeding on the salmon that were not getting beyond a long shallow stretch where there were so many bears it was suicide for the salmon who tried to get by. I mentioned in my last entry about the snow drifts perhaps stopping the fish. There is only one of these still spanning the river and it is not what is holding the salmon back. The best salmon catching area for the bears is about four kilometers down stream. Biscuit will sometimes go about one kilometer down stream and as the map shows we have not seen Brandy go to where the river leaves the lake. The surge of high water from this storm will make it possible for all the surviving salmon to come to the lake to spawn

Lately, we've been lax about activating the electric fence around the cabin because there were so few bears on our side of the lake. (The Kolb aircraft has a separate system). On the night of July 15th, we had gone to bed with the door wide open to keep the cabin as cool as we could. I can't remember being as uncomfortably hot at night as we were those couple days. While reading in bed, my attention was drawn suddenly to a movement out through the open door. A bear had its head through the fence, and was staring at me. It was young and looked familiar and we soon recognized her as Lime. Brandy and Lemon were just beyond the gate and I realized she and her family would have no education about our fence. It was obvious the way Lime had her head through the wire that they could have all been inside. As a strategy for staying cool, I didn't have a thing on and I didn't take the time to dress before rushing out to turn the fence on.

Maureen should be telling this story to explain the look on Brandy's face when I jumped down off the porch, naked and reached under the deck for the switch, but I don't trust her in relating some of the details. As you know we spend many hours with these bears and neither of us had ever seen Brandy stand up before except when she is in the lake looking for salmon. Of course the bears had never seen a human with no clothes on before either. Maureen said all three bears stood up with a very startled look on their faces, huffing and snorting, then stampeded back towards Char Creek whence they had come. She doubts we will ever see them here again. Luckily, we do not have any photos of this Kambalnoye Lake episode.

- Charlie