Cherry Copters

This is what you wake up to on a rainy day here this time of year. The cherry copters. It's cherry harvest time - in fact, this weekend is the Cherry Festival. Should be a bumper crop this year, but if cherries get wet when they're just about ready to harvest, they burst. So after every shower, the Flathead Cherry Growers' Association sends around the cherry copters to dry off the orchards. This is the orchard just down the hill from our house, getting dried off:

This goes into the ever-growing file of "stuff I didn't know until I moved to Montana," like the fact that black bears come in different colors, what a shore station is, and how to use a chainsaw.

Enough with the bears . . .

Enough with the bears this year. Yesterday afternoon a small cinnamon bear came out of the trees and ambled along the edge of our driveway, then ran off toward where we store our boat. Which we were just going to finish getting ready for the season.

Me: You go finish getting the boat ready.

Dean: No, you go. You were doing a fine job this morning.

Me: No reason I should have all the fun. You go ahead.

We both went. One to clean and one to stand bearwatch.

Last night I was on the deck reading after Dean went to bed. Woody started growling, then barking, then ran to the edge of the deck. Another one. Bigger cinnamon bear in the clearing behind the house. Woody gave him his fiercest “red alert” bark, I added a little yelling and he ran off into the woods. Or she? Maybe the mama of the smaller one we saw earlier? Okay, it’s Montana. We have bears. But this is getting ridiculous. Might have go to all Fish & Wildlife on their ursine asses.