Skip to main content

Lions, (no Tigers) and Bears, Oh my



We came home from a weekend at Steamboat Springs yesterday. It seems the bears had a picnic under the pine tree in our front yard. My neighbor snapped this pic of the diners before they came to our house (restaurant?) . There were hamburger wrappers, napkins, and paper cups with straws all around. I didn't know bears used straws. They even left their own 'calling cards' in the lawn and driveway.  We have had a momma bear and 2 cubs in the neighborhood for about 3 weeks now. 
Yes they are wild and yes they (she) is potentially dangerous, but not nearly as frightening as this visitor we had about 15 years ago.
That's our house on the other side of the fence. At the time, our other neighbor had some ceramic deer statues in his yard and the lion decided to investigate.












Labels:

Comments

  1. Far Side of FiftySeptember 23, 2019 at 9:44 PM

    Scary visitor! We had a bear visit last year not yet this year. I bet you had a fun time away!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A Percussionist's NotebookSeptember 24, 2019 at 8:11 AM

      Thank you for the visit. Sadly last night we found out that the momma bear was put down by the Wildlife Dept. The cubs were tranquilized and removed.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tambourine Shell Repair

A broken tambourine shell usually means that a new tambourine purchase is necessary. This can be exciting: I like getting new instruments, or sad: Any instrument that is damaged is a terrible thing. All tambourine shells can break, from my famous $14 variety to top of the line brands like Grover and Black Swamp. It's easy to replace a tambourine head but broken shells/missing pins and jingles usually means an early grave for the instrument. My early attempts at these repairs were stopgap measures until a new one was found. Wood or 'super' glue used on the shell turned out to be poor choices. It wasn't until last year that I really focused on shell repair. It happened during a Canyon Winds rehearsal when one of our tambourines exploded, pins and jingles were flying everywhere. Yep, it was the Resident Gorilla playing it. The shell had cracked between three sets of jingles near the head of the tambourine. We eventually replaced this with a Black Swamp tambourine but I s...
2 comments
Read more

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of ...
3 comments
Read more

The Practice Pad

The practice pad has long been a staple for the drummer. After a pair of sticks it usually was the next thing purchased. Or in the case for my brother and I, a DIY project by our father. It could be as simple as a square of linoleum nailed on a board to the double sided models that produce various amounts of rebound.  There are many reasons for using a practice pad. I'll start with the obvious: Practical: Compared to a real drum, they are cheap. They are fairly quiet, you can play them without annoying a sleeping parent or a neighbor in an adjoining apartment. They are portable, they can be taken on a family vacation where space is at a premium. Musical: Usually they provide more rebound than a drum head, which helps in developing single strokes but especially rolls. Articulation: The sound of each stroke is cleaner giving the player important feedback on the precision of their playing. Developing positional accuracy: Drawing a circle the size of a quarter on the pad provides a ...
2 comments
Read more