Bear Hunting

 This is a Black Bear.  He was seen hanging out in a nearby town towards the end of last week, kinda woozy and coming out of hibernation.  He pillaged a few homes and ate a number of small pets (just kidding) before heading up towards my neighborhood.  In this particular picture, he's eating young children (or birdseed) out of a birdhouse in the neighborhood across from mine.

Our township has been tracking him pretty diligently, and our suburban town is kind of having a blast keeping track of this guy.  However, NJ Fish & Game won't tranq & relocate him, for whatever reason, so we've also all kind of been on the edge of our seats.

Now, some of you know that I got my bachelor's degree in maps.  I knew that toiling away over ArcGIS and learning everything in the ArcMap ArcToolbox would ArcPay Off one day, and that day is today.  I present to you, my highly scientific, high resolution, properly sourced and totally accurate map of the path of the Marlton Bear.

See, the black line is where I assume he has travelled.  Again, it's scientific.

The interesting part of this is the part where the Red Dot is placed... you see, that's where Galahad and Acorn tend to congregate.  Very close to this unpredictable but bloodthirtsy and ravaging thirty foot tall Grizzly.  

I spoke to Gali about this.  I told him to leave Paddington (now I've named it!) alone if he sees him, and not to make friends or try to bite him or anything.  Gali assured me he would stay as far away from the fuzzy critter as he possibly could.

When I went to talk to Acorn, the younger pony seemed to have different ideas.  After some consideration and a well thought out plan, Corn and I went Bear Hunting.

Heading out on our Adventure to find The Bear

We looked left!

We looked right!!

We looked left again!

...and when we didn't see any bears, we rode a couple of laps around the farm, did some hill work, and called it a day.

I love this pony.