Chocolate Lovin' Bear

Earlier this month my mom left the pantry window open a few inches - like she often does in nice weather. But on this occasion she was not anticipating an intruder. Along comes Mrs. Brown Bear, who is obviously premenstrual and craving chocolate. The bear slides open the window, pops off the screen and climbs into the pantry. My parents are sleeping like hibernating bears themselves - they didn't hear a thing!


The bear proceeds to ingest an entire five pound bag of Ghiradelli chocolate chips and two boxes of brownie mix. Yumm. That certainly hits the spot! When her picnic is over she climbs back out of the pantry.

The only evidence the bear was there are the discarded packaging from the mix and chips and one very large, muddy, paw print on the wall where she gave herself a "leg up" out the window.

And I thought my neighbors were annoying!

For the Birds

We went to the beach yesterday. It may be our last beach day of the summer, which makes me sad. For someone raised in the mountains I sure have taken to the beaches!

Oleg brought grapes and we fed the shriveled ones to the seagulls. He threw one grape in the direction of a gull, it bounced off the sand twice and the gull caught it mid-air in his beak. Clever little bugger, must have had some practice! A couple of weekends ago we were at this same beach and one gull opened a bag of animal crackers someone had hid under a beach towel. Within a couple of minutes a whole flock of gulls had strewn animal crackers all over and were in a mad dash to snap up as many as they could. It was comical but I would be annoyed if they had been my animal crackers.