My home is 2 miles up a dirt road, past the power poles, past the telephone lines, past the reaches of city water and sewer systems. We live pretty simply, enjoying the quiet and remoteness with the advantage of being able to drive to and from the house most of the year.

The summer of 2003 reminded me that I really do live in the woods. For the first time in 28 years, warmth and lack of mosquitoes formed a unique combination. We had never had need of screens for the windows because it was never warm enough to leave the windows open. But that year, my husband Eric and I had been leaving the bedroom window open all day and night.

In the middle of the night, which of course being summer it was still light out, I was awakened by a loud noise and woke to see a black blur at the bedroom window. I said to Eric, "Something big just jumped out the window!" Since he didn't react, I got up and looked out the window and there was a big black bear in the yard. It had stuck its head in through the window, and the noise of it pulling its head out woke me up. It went behind the generator shed and threw a bunch of water jugs around. The window had gotten skewed a bit and wouldn't close tightly so that was scary. Eric still didn't wake up so I figured he must really be tired and that I would just tell him in the morning. He didn't really believe me until he saw the footprints in the flower bed under the window. The bear had been at the house a bunch all summer, sniffing around and looking in boxes and bags on the porch. It hadn't made much of a mess since we don't leave garbage or the dog food out there (anymore).

After this, we just left the windows upstairs open.

This winter, there is a squirrel or maybe a weasel living in my house. It got in sometime during the fall and has been creeping around at night, rattling the waxed paper on the cracker packages, scurrying around the floor, batting at a wooden ball that was on the windowsill. I confronted it once, when it snuck in through a gap in the insulation between the upstairs porch and downstairs. Eric slept through most of that encounter also, awaking only in response to my screaming and only long enough to give the squirrel The Look. I managed to shoo the squirrel back outside that time, but somehow it found its way back in. Late at night, I hear it, imagine it bigger than it is. Eric does not believe that it is a weasel — or maybe a wolverine!? — because the only thing we caught making a racket was a vole who had fallen into a cereal box and couldn't get out.

With Eric gone this winter, things seem scarier than usual, although he has not been much help on the Wildlife in the Bedroom front in the past.

But something jumped up on the bed last night and curled up next to me — and we do not have a cat or dog! — and so I am staying in town until the hardware store gets its shipment of rat traps.

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Geri Denkewalter
Talkeetna, Alaska
 

Added on 05/03/2011

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