NEW CALIFORNIA: MASS IMMIGRATION TURNING VIRGINIA BLUE

Elk, coyote, and various other critters are, too. What was open pasture when I was growing up is now growing back into jungle, and the critters are coming back with it. Bear, coyote, and assorted others on their own, elk and red wolves via a reinrtroduction strategy. Actually, most of the elk migrated across state lines from Kentucky, where they are being restocked. I guess elk can't read very well, and missed the state line signs. Red wolves are being bred in North Carolina for reintroduction to the Appalachains, and they sometimes migrate to greener pastures from their release points there.

When I was younger, I saw exactly 3 bears over all that time. One from a distance, one up close in a blackberry patch, and one in a cage. I also saw the remains of one, just a few bones left, in the woods on Clinch Mountain. Now they are everywhere.

There has been a bear seen here several times in this holler, a few hundred meters to the north where the holler forks. I heard a cub bawling on the hillside opposite my house about a week ago. I used to have a great lumbering coon hound who weighed about 90 pounds. He came in once with a gash from fighting the bear, and after we got him patched up, I guess he went for a rematch, and never came back.

Where I am staying through the week, there are 3 bears - large, medium, and small. We call them Momma Bear, Poppa Bear, and Baby Bear. I heard one thrashing around and knocking stuff over outside my house about midnight last Thursday night, but didn't get out there fast enough to see which one it was. Poppa Bear has confronted my brother in law on his own porch twice, and I have video of one of them walking down his driveway on his surveillance camera. My sister has gotten pictures of a bear , a pretty big one, that comes out of the woods to raid the dumpster in the night time at a school over there. There is a pizza place a few miles from here where a bear comes to the dumpster about every night to eat pizza.

Yup, they are making a comeback - it just goes to show that in the end, the wild WILL win.