A Proper Raincoast Break and Enter

 The wild winter weather has continued. So, when I walked around the farm to feed dinner late one exceptionally rainy and windy night, I was surprised, but not *super* surprised to see the barn doors hanging off their tracks. Weird, because they latch and have stoppers and windy days normally barely rattle them, let alone completely rip them off the building. Did I forget to close and lock them?

And whoa. Somehow the wind blew one of my (full of grain) feed bins out of the building and halfway down the yard?

Pre break in when I was feeling a little smug about my storm prepping organization

When I walked into the feed room side of the barn, the actual cause of the chaos became a little more obvious. Muddy bear prints everywhere. In retrospect walking into the barn on a dark and windy night with fresh muddy bear prints all over it maybe wasn't my wisest decision, but my brain needed to catch up to the evidence.

The good news is that I think I might have interrupted the burglary in progress, because aside from my feed bin and a few things rummaged through or tipped over, everything inside the building was undamaged (note a few days later - the oil I top their feed with had one tooth hole in the container and slowly leaked everywhere before I noticed. RIP to that and all it touched)

No actual pictures of bears or barn mess in the moment because it was late in the evening in a 'bomb cyclone' and I was just trying to get everything patched back up to survive the night. This is from a couple of nights later. My other excuse for poor media is this is the light situation after work days. Check out how flooded everything still was though. It's dried out a bit since, but it still is so grim around here this time of year :(

The doors sustained moderate damage - the latches were broken and needed replacing, and he spent a bit of time trying to pull the bottom of the doors apart so the frames needed repairing and reinforcing and some boards reattached. Again, no photo documentation because there I was at midnight in the dark, wind and rain, fixing them so I could lock everything up again. I think my cheap sliding system on the top of the doors might have had an unexpected bonus because the bear was eventually able to simply lift the door off the tracks rather than continuing to try to break through them. He’s strong though, it was a two person job to re hang them all! 

All reattached and repaired and you can't even tell it was a thing. Surprisingly gentle bear, my cat scratched a door in our house worse than this :)

So, more good news, because it turned out to be an easy enough fix.

The bad news is that a freaking bear took the doors off my barn looking for snacks.

Sophie has this gate behind the doors (I leave them open in summer for airflow) so while she was understandably concerned, there were no pony escape worries.

He found nothing, apparently hay and horse vitamins are not to his liking because my bag of feed was taken out of the bin and dinner feed buckets tipped over, but no contents were eaten. In addition to my hay stall door he ripped Sophie's stall door off too and moved the black planters around. Although logically I know he is not looking for horses to eat...what if he is looking for horses to eat? *cue sleepless nights*

Electric wire around the back of the barn until I figure out how to make the perimeter yard gates people friendly but not bear friendly. Electric wire across our front yard gate would be the most practical, however maybe not the most inviting for visitors and deliveries:)

Sort of good news (for me, not him) is that he's young and little-ish and his MO is breaking into people's sheds looking for garbage or freezers of food. So this might have been an exploratory thing rather than targeted and now that he knows we aren't worth his time I can hope he stays away. It’s pretty late in the season though, so I’m worried. We have careless neighbours and if he’s finding enough elsewhere to hang around this winter, I am worried he might get himself in trouble.

Sophie helping with fence repairs. Between her scratching her butt, rambunctious yearlings doing their thing, and Yogi climbing over everything, our fences/fence posts took a beating this year. I'm so weird about things that it's going to annoy me to no end to have new posts and rails that don't match the rest of the fences (until I can stain them in the spring) Not to mention the mud and bear scratches all over the back of the barn lol, why is my brain like this because I REALLY want to clean and paint it now.