I know I'm in Canada so this is kinda cheating but.....I'm very happy to live somewhere where bears are still relatively common. Even though they can become a pest depending on where you live. Saw this guy on my way home from the summer cottage last month. Goes along with the bear scat on the cottage island this summer. Only 9 acres so when there is one on the island, it's close. My dog Scout made sure there were only chipmunks while we were there. Although she did find every burr plant on the island!
Canvasback,
Those big ears are a telltale indicator of what we call a 'dink'. You could walk right up and pet him! Seriously, besides mumma with cubs the teenagers are the most dangerous.
My son spent the first week of July at Whistler-Blackcombe attending a ski racing camp on the glacier. Every day as the kids took a series of gondola and chairlifts up to the very top of the mountain, at about the half way point they would see one or two grizzlies poking about on the grassy ski slopes. I don't think any of them asked if they could walk down at the end of the day. LOL
Sometimes it's a bit easy to get complacent about them, especially having watched old native women shoo 6 or 7 away at one time (from 5 yards away from the bears!) at an old dump before they closed it. When I lived in Banff, both black and grizzlies would show up from time to time, along with elk, in the town. But the summer I moved away, a girl was killed and several others attacked not 100 yards away from where I lived. They are big, fast and dangerous.
edit to add: And seeing as this is off topic already....my first sighting of wild wolves came when I was in northern Saskatchewan when I was 11. Earlier this month, my son and I saw a wolf cross the highway in front of us, along the north shore of Superior. My son's first wolf. He's 11. I like that symmetry.
