There are bears around us, but we rarely see them. They are generally private and peaceful souls, the deputies said there was a 400 pound bear wreaking havoc with the garbage cans and bird feeders of nearby Cambridge. We’d never seen this one before, even though he must have walked past our farm fence every day.

We live side by side with nature, but we have not figured out a way to live around nature without killing so much of it, animal bodies – deer, sometimes bears, hedgehogs, squirrels, raccoons, barn cats – line the road. We don’t think much of all this carnage, it is part of life, but I will think a while on the image of that big and beautiful bear getting hit by the big truck.