Now here is a beauty! We get a good number of bears coming down from the hills to partake of the bounty of the neighbour's blueberry fields. The farm next over has strung electric fencing for the past two years to deter the critters, but the neighbour, lacking common sense has set the line at the innermost edge of the municipal ditch. The bears work up a fair speed going down into the ditch from the roadside and go through the fence at the field side at top speed, hardly feeling the charge in the wire as their passage breaks it.

I suppose the blueberry grower will figure it out sooner or later...or maybe not. Though I have read reports of bears in the eastern US eating cranberries we've never seen them do this at our farm.

Rumours had the largest farm in our area shooting half a dozen bears last year. It is indicative of how screwed up our environmental protection laws are that such is allowed to happen. There are relatively inexpensive ways to discourage bears from getting in amongst the crops, none of which require killing the critter. I have always figured that by the simple expedient of requiring farmers to report publicly when they shoot bears or coyotes in the fields the carnage would cease. The citizenry should be appalled that for the simple presence of a bear in a blueberry field the response has to be, bang, bang.