The Big Bear

4-H raconteur Aiden Bustard 
Myra Hammond photo

Aiden Bustard, Chinook Multi 4-H Club Speech

Aiden Bustard was a participant in the recent Chinook Multi 4-H Club 2013 Club Level Communication Competition.  The following is a speech he prepared and presented at that event. 

Late one night, the dogs were barking like crazy hyenas!  We were too scared to investigate the mystery of why the dogs were barking, because it was toooo dark outside.

Maybe it was a coyote, because we have had coyotes at our house before.

So when we went outside the next morning, to investigate, we were surprised to see a hole in the side of our pig shed.  "I wonder what made the hole in the barn," I said to my mom.  "It doesn't look like something a coyote or a cougar would do, so what made the hole?"


"Maybe it was a bear," my brother said.

I walked to the other side of the shed to investigate further.  You would not believe what I saw.  The fence was bent and dented.  I called my mom to show her the damage.  "It looks like we had a big, brown visitor last night."

Upon further investigation, we discovered something had sharpened their claws on  the front door, and the animal left some fur on a nail.

The evidence left behind told us this was a bear.  But what kind of bear was it?  We called Fish and Wildlife right away to help us with this mystery.

After lunch, the Fish and Wildlife officer came to our house.

He put a box called a Critter Gitter on a nail where the bear had entered the building.  The Critter Gitter catches movement. So if it catches the bear's movement, it'll make a screeching sound.  If the bear hears the noise, which it probably will, it will hopefully run away, in hopes of never coming back.  Well, the Critter Gitter didn't work, because the bear came back again.  We know this, because the trail camera took some beautiful pictures of him trying to make a den under the barn.  The only other thing the Fish and Wildlife officer thought we could do is trap him.   He brought a trap the next day, and set it up.

But the only things that got trapped in it, were our dogs.  All this was happening around the end of October.  On Halloween night, my dad had to go outside for something.  When he opened the door, he heard a a loud clang.  Then a thump bump, thump bump, thump bump.  At first dad thought it was kind of neat.  But then he realized what it was and then it wasn't neat anymore.

As it turned out, the bear did not come back after that night. I was happy that he didn't come back after that night, because I did not want him to hurt us.  It's just a fact of nature that he was looking for a den to sleep in this winter.

Related link:
Multi 4-H Club holds 2013 Club Level Communication Competition