a bear story (with spoiler pics along the way)

the wife and i watched reports of the black bear that wandered into suburban st. louis yesterday, inside the 270 outer-highway circle, then made its way to a town very nearby by this afternoon. 1/

the wife — happy mother’s day, love! — looked at me, sitting on the couch, and said, “do you want to try and find it?”

of course i did.

so we loaded up kiddo and spent a couple hours driving around following hour-old reports, with one stop and Target and one to pick up food. 2/

the wife suggested one last loop. she had a hunch based on how she thought the bear would react to highways, etc. we drove down a road, saw cop cars. rolled down the window and asked, “the bear?”

cop nodded. “in that tree.”

we were only 1.5 miles from our house. crazy. 3/

we watched for almost an hour. the missouri dept of conservation was there, as was a big crowd of people; some like us who had been trying to find it, others who saw the crowd and wondered what was happening. MDC tranq’d it before we left, but they hadn’t gotten it down yet. 4/

i told my wife when we got home, “i love you, but i’m not sure i’m going to be able to top ‘tracking and finding a bear near home’ for Mother’s Day 2022.”

5/5