Persimmon Glen

When I was a kid on the farm we used to burn our trash in a barrel out back. For some reason, it always seemed like a 'guy' thing. You know, the old timers standing out by the burning barrel jawing about what the weather would bring. Maybe it was because it was always my brothers job to take out the trash, and my Dad was the one to burn it.

I grew up in Missouri and there was always critters around. I mean the wild kind, like raccoons and possums and skunks, squirrels, rabbits and an occasional coyote.

The biggest concern was when a pack of dogs would come around. They could be dangerous when all together, even though individually they belonged to a nearby farm and were probably great dogs, but get them together and you needed to make sure your dogs were put up and keep an eye on the chickens roaming the yard.

In the mountains of Tennessee, we have the usual critters too and then some. Any where you go you're gonna have to put up with nearby neighbors dogs making their daily trek through the woods, and of course there are plenty of coons and possums and skunks, coyotes and squirrels.
One thing to add to the list is chipmunks. Oh, they are the CUTEST things! Little tiny rust colored bodies with two black stripes down their back, running here and there as fast as their little legs can carry them. You don't see them all that much, but if you sit outside for a while and be real quiet, you'll see' em come out. They're shy little guys.

I went first thing to the local hardware/lumber yard and got a 50 gal metal barrel to burn my trash in. In my of thinking, what doesn't get added to the compost heap can easily be burned and that's a little less to go to the landfill.

We have a lot more trash nowadays than people used to have. Everything has a package and there is so much more to buy in the stores than there was when I was a kid. Living by myself, I can generate a bag full every other day. It doesn't seem possible, but I do.
So I start burning that trash and found myself, like my Dad standing out there watching it burn. I wanted to make sure it all burned down so that no critters would want to get into it. Maybe that was why he did it too.

The odor of burning trash turns out to be a beacon to every living thing within a 1/2 mile. The morning after I burned my first barrel, I looked out and the whole barrel was knocked on it's side and the remainder that did not burn was strewed all over the place. So naturally I go out and pick it all up, place it back in the barrel and set the barrel back up on its concrete blocks.
I burned a new bag about every other day, but every single blasted night something came out and knocked it over and I had to pick it up again the next day.

Well, one morning I was out there picking it up and getting pretty aggravated until I stepped back and the heel of my foot landed in a very large pile of bear poop.

How did I know it was bear poop, you ask?

Because it was full of cherry pits, the kind that grow all over my property and were literally covering the ground. Tiny, sweet, dark cherries that I myself had been picking up and enjoying for the last week or so. Bears adore them.

Now, you have to understand, most people I know would be terrified, I however, was completely delighted. I actually had a bear come visit me! We have lots of them in East Tennessee and it was nothing unusual to see them, especially in town where they like to get into everyone's garbage. I had even heard from the neighbors that there was a rogue in the area that liked to go through bags of garbage but I was delighted to know that I had my very own personal bear, and here was the proof!

I left that pile there, proudly traipsing everyone that came to visit up to see it. In the meantime, nightly without fail he would knock over my can whether I had burned anything in it or not and I would dutifully go pick it up, only now I didn't mind so much because it was MY bears' mess to clean. I had yet to see him, he always came while I was sleeping, but I knew he was around.

I eventually tired of picking up the barrel, and started taking my trash to the dump. I also decided I didn't want to contribute to his delinquency, since nuisance bears are usually trapped by the rangers and hauled off to the deep interior of the national park, and the sad thing is, if they should hurt someone, the rangers have to trap him and kill him. I certainly did not want THAT to happen!

Even though I haven't burned anything in that barrel for a couple of months, if it is in an upright position, by morning it will be on it's side. I even laid a trap for him one time so I could get a photograph. I laid out a half a cantaloupe on a log in the yard. That darn cantaloupe laid out there for two days untouched, so the third day I moved it close to the barrel. I'll be darned if the barrel wasn't knocked over again, but the melon was untouched. What kind of bear was this?

One night as I was just falling off to sleep, I actually heard the barrel go down. I jumped up, grabbed the flashlight and quietly opened the door so I could finally see my bear. I shined that light out into the dark and there by the trash can were two eyes reflected back at me. He turned his head away from the light of the flashlight and then I slowly examined his big black body, only to find that it was a neighbors Labrador Retriever.

It's wintertime now and my barrel forlornly lays on it's side day and night. The bears are hibernating and the neighborhood dogs still make their daily rounds. I've gotten friendly with the fellow that monitors the dumpster site, but I haven't given up on my bear. Come spring, I just know he'll show up and I'll have a new pile of poop to show my visitors, only this time it'll be because he wants to come and eat the cherries, not because I'm burning the trash.