A Large Black Visitor in Virginia

It started two days ago, when I noticed this "puncture wound" on the rear bumper of my rental car:

There's only one thing I know of that can do that to a car bumper -- a bear. But I hadn't seen one recently.

My assistants at the Governor's School speculated that the bear must have thought my car was just a giant marshmallow:

Certainly one of the ugliest and most dysfunctional cars on the road. Driver's visibility is poor, and it only gets 25 mpg. Horrible car! Can't imagine why anyone would purchase this. Must be why it's on the rental market.

Then this morning, while I was eating breakfast, I noticed movement outside the kitchen window, and watched this for about 10 minutes:

The bear was about 15 feet up in a small serviceberry tree.  How the tree held the bear's weight (probably at least 200 lb) is a mystery -- I think it's because the bear was literally draped over the top of the tree, with several branches bearing the weight.

These are the serviceberries that the bear was eating. I thought they looked nice, and took this picture last week.

What's left of the top of the tree.

Another view of broken branches -- you can see them in the upper left and upper right of the photo.

Another serviceberry next to the one that had the bear -- it must have climbed this one as well. The bear behavior also probably explains strange damage to the crown of a black cherry growing next to the serviceberries.

And when I went to take some compost to our compost bins, I found that the bear had come this way as well.

The bear must have come up the hill behind these bins. It ignored the compost, but did a number on the stacked cement blocks.

Fortunately, it didn't take too much time to put the bins back together. But I did have to mind the hornets and wasps whose nests had been disrupted.