His name is Bobo

My Friday night was interesting, to say the absolute least. It started out normal enough--Todd and I grilled shrimp and chicken kebabs (marinated and assembled by moi), and they were fantastic. We were sitting around having some cocktails when his commander and some other Lts. stopped over, so I went over to the commander's house to hang out with his wife, Lisa. Another neighbor came over too, and we were just sitting in the kitchen when the guys came back and parked themselves in the garage.

At around 11:30, my geriatric self said goodbye to everyone, told Todd to stay, and started the very short walk back to our house (they live on the corner of our block). I wasn't really paying attention, but did notice that my kitchen light was on. I silently wondered whether Paulie was sleeping, or if he'd be barking his head off when I got in the door. Then I noticed that our garbage can was knocked over. I thought that was strange, but it gets pretty windy out here, so whatev. That's when I saw it. The black bear. In.my.front.yard. Holy effing christ.




I sort of froze for a minute, because this isn't something I'm used to. I'm from the city of Chicago for pete's sake. My idea of wildlife is squirrels. They sometimes have no tails or one eye, but I attribute that to city toxins and inbreeding. Anyway. I then turned around and booked it back to the neighbors. I really wanted to yell, but it was late and I didn't want to get hauled in by the high and mighty MP's (military police). Todd see's me running back and is like, what the heck, so then I started yelling about the bear. Of course, everyone hears me and runs out of the house, gets into a car, and drives the 50 feet to our house to see the bear. It was still there, chilling in the rocks in front of our house:



Yes, that is actually our house. Lisa grabbed her camera and got these pictures while Todd was calling the MP's. Their reaction to a bear blocking our front door was, "Oh yeah, we've been getting a lot of calls like this. We'll try to send a car out. We're pretty busy tonight." Excuse me? You'll try to send a car out? Maybe we should have told them it was being hostile or something. (And it turns out, that's what we were ultimately advised to do by the biggest.douchebag.ever later in the night.) The MP's eventually came, and it turns out some MP provost guy (the douche) lives just up the street from us, and pretty much thought he was the ruler of the earth. He gave me attitude, treated Todd like a child, and all around made everyone want to punch him. He basically told us we were lucky we didn't live in "the ghetto" part of post where the lower enlisted live (his words, not mine), because they get 5-6 domestic violence calls a night and always get reports of gunshots in the neighborhood. Like I said before: douche.bag.

So far, we've had no more bear sightings this weekend. However, this is the second time our garbage can has been knocked over, and I don't think it will be the last. Things like this make me crave the sights and smells of my Chicago.