Visitor is not frightened

CORNWALL — Several years ago, Marc Simont, the well-known children’s book author and political cartoonist, created an image of a hot lazy summer day for a local publication.

The drawing depicts a mid-summer day in the Northwest Corner: an Adirondack chair on a lawn beside a bed of flowers with a view of the Litchfield hills in the distance—with a bear seated comfortably in the Adirondack chair. And instead of lemonade, a broken birdfeeder was at the animal’s side.

Last weekend, Simont’s picture came to life before my eyes when a large black bear with a thick, glossy coat ambled up Dibble Hill Road in West Cornwall and decided to pay us a visit.

He wasn’t the least bit frightened—indeed, when you’re the size of a Smart Car why should you be afraid of a couple of human beings digging in the garden? He walked through the wisteria-covered garden arch, looked around to get his “bearings� — and went straight to the birdfeeder, pulled it down, emptied the seed out onto the lawn and started licking it up.

Satiated, he stretched out and decided to stay a while —long enough at least for me, standing 10 feet away with an open door at my back, to take 20 pictures and call Town Hall and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

He decided it was time to go only when a larger-than-a-Smart-Car car stopped on the road to admire him—and with a little encouragement from our Shih Tzu, who shot out the door in a whirlwind of legs and barks ready to take him on.