The Bear in My Backyard- Read and Print

By Rachel Dunstan Muller, copyright 2019

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Most of the stories I share with you are madeup stories – stories that come from my imagination. But the story I’m about to tell really happened. It’s a true story.

Now first of all, you need to know that in the fall, where I live, on Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Canada, big fish called salmon swim from where they live in the ocean, they swim and they swim and they swim, until they reach the very same river where they were hatched from eggs. They swim back up the river so they can lay their own eggs. And do you know how they find the right river? They can smell their way back!

Well, every fall, my son Isaac and my daughter Ana and I like to go see the salmon spawning in the river. It’s an amazing sight! The salmon are big, as long as my grownup arm, and they have to fight the current to get up the river. They can even leap over waterfalls. They can leap higher than me!

But do you know who else likes to see the salmon in the fall? The bears that live in the forest beside the river. Salmon are the bears’ favourite food. They eat and they eat and they eat until their bellies are nice and full.

Now, the bears that live on Vancouver Island are usually pretty nice bears. If we leave them alone, they will usually leave us alone. But they’re still wild animals – and you don’t want to surprize a wild animal or make it angry – especially a momma bear. So a few years ago, when we went to watch the salmon spawn, we were very, very careful.

We stayed on the trail as we walked through the forest to the river.

We talked in loud voices so the bears would hear us coming and not be startled or surprized.

We looked this way, and we looked that way. We looked up at the tall trees, and we looked down into the water.

We saw salmon swimming and leaping.

We saw an owl sitting high in a tree.

We saw eagles soaring in the sky.

But we didn’t see any bears.

On the way back, we stayed on the trail.

We talked in loud voices so the bears would hear us coming.

We looked this way, and we looked that way. We looked up, and we looked down.

But we still we didn’t see any bears.

So, we got into our car, and we drove home and we made a big pot of soup for our supper.

But then, just as we were about to sit down at the table, what do you think we saw out our kitchen window?

We saw a bear sitting in the apple tree in our backyard! Bears don’t just like salmon in the fall – they also like apples!

Well, we all looked at that bear through the window, and the bear looked back at us. But he didn’t like us staring at him while he was eating. He wasn’t in a hurry, but he climbed down from the tree, and he walked across the yard, and he climbed over our wooden gate – and then he walked away, down the road.

And we never saw that bear again . . .

 . . . But when the apples on our trees go missing before we’ve had a chance to pick them – we know the bear has been back for a visit!

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