He's baaaack!
That pic was taken 1:00 am Saturday morning. It seemed like his cycle to make his rounds was getting shorter. Well, it's gotten a LOT shorter. I heard the driveway alarm about 1:30am this morning (Monday), so I had a hunch it was the bear. I scrounged up the night vision goggles I have laying around here and went out onto the front porch. Sure enough I saw him ambling across the yard headed for the bird feeders next to the house. I could hear him before I saw him, as he certainly wasn't trying to be very stealth like. And he IS pretty darn big. Made me a little nervous just standing out on the porch in my jammies. I'm not even sure having my .357Sig in my hand would have been any more comforting, neither.
I went into the bed room and woke Connie up, armed with an air horn to try to scare him away via the window looking out over the bird feeders, but I guess all the racket I made opening up the window was enough to chase him away. I put up a water based varmint deterrent earlier today that I've used in the past to keep deer away from the fruit trees to cover the bird feeder near the garage, so I guess I'll find out tomorrow morning whether that helped to protect that feeder from him. He might have just eaten it.
And I coincidentally placed an order for an electric fence charger today, along with wire and other items, figuring I'll wire up the bird feeders and zap him to convince him that he needs to stop coming around here and wrecking the feeders. I'm guessing that when the fruit trees start bearing fruit he'll have a field day then, so I want to get him out of here before then.