[Rich Z]

Well, THAT was REAL different....

I heard the driveway alarm go off, so I walked on down towards the mailbox to see what was going on. As I turned the bend to the left, I spotted what I thought were the legs and trunk of someone standing in the driveway. The thing that puzzled me was how black and furry that body was. I didn't get more than just that glimpse because it shot off into the woods before I could shout anything other than "HEY!"

I thought pretty certainly that I had seen a black bear up close, but in thinking about it, those hind legs just seemed too long. I looked up some pics of standing black bears on the web and those legs in the pics just seem way shorter and stubbier than what I saw. They looked much more like human legs to me, but more uniform in diameter, cylindrical, and stockier than a human's. I would say they were probably as long as my own legs, proportionally. Unfortunately I didn't actually see it's head, as it was obscured by a low hanging branch closer to me, and I wasn't really inclined to chase it into the woods. I walked down to look for tracks but all I saw were a pair of claw marks from the left foot and what looked like the forefront of the right foot where it apparently had dug in to sprint into the woods. I wasn't making any particular efforts to be quiet, so I really don't know why I was able to get as close as I did to it.

Heck, beats the heck out of me. I was sure it was a black bear until I started looking at photographs online. The legs on them just don't look like what I saw. Now I just don't know........