If you’ve read any of my blog, you know we get our share of black bears up here. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, skinny ones. Like everything else, they ebb and flow across our little patch according to the mountain’s invisible rhythm.
And we are all for it. We like bears. We respect bears. They are an integral and wonderful part of the neighborhood.
But this fall they started “flowing” around the coop a little too much. There is a fine line between “picturesque mountain life” and “nature documentary with casualties,” and we don’t want to cross it—particularly not with our beloved chickens.
So, I had a choice—stay up late sitting in the dark with an air horn and shotgun, waiting for a bear that might never show up, or figure out a remote solution.
I like sleep, so I started looking for the remote solution.
Now, hear me on this: I’m not interested in hurting a bear for being a bear. They’re doing what bears do—wandering around, sniffing out calories. I just need them to update their internal map so that our coop is flagged as “absolutely not worth it.”
So the question was: how do you give a bear a really bad sixty seconds without harming it?
Answer: something that could go boom without me being there.
Enter a centuries-old (or older?) solution—the tripwire.
After a little research, I found the perfect device—a small metal housing that can mount to a post or tree and holds a 12-gauge blank round. A firing pin sets the thing off when the tripwire pulls a small retention pin.
It’s perfect. Bear sniffs around the coop, drags a paw across the hardware cloth, hits the tripwire, and BOOM. No projectile, no buckshot, just a loud, startling, and educational noise. (After a couple of test runs, I can attest to the quality of the boom.)
I installed it where the bears tend to do the most sniffing and damage, made sure the tripwire was taut, and left it armed for our next nocturnal ursine guest.
See the little orange wire? You can also see the square repair job necessitated by one of the recent bear visits.
And naturally—because this is how the universe works—we haven’t had a single bear come by since.
Honestly, that’s fine. Nothing happening is a win for me and the girls. As I wrap this entry up, here is the situation:
- Bears: quiet, hopefully exploring other parts of the mountain.
- Chickens: alive, opinionated, utterly unaware of the drama.
- Tripwire: armed and patiently awaiting its big moment.
- Me: sleeping well.
When (not if) the thing goes off, I expect to see a moment of high-velocity bear butt skying over the coop fence to get away from the boom.
And I’ll keep you posted.