The Bear

 I know there is a bear out there
Although I have never seen it.
My part-time inner sleuth
Has been busily sifting through the clues
Ever since my neighbor Susan put that image in play.
She said, as casually as one can talk about a bear,
“Did you hear about the black bear that was seen
Down the street?  Ya, the folks at Adam’s Garden of Eden spotted it.
Six feet tall.  Pretty big.  Ya.”
This moment, these thoughts
Were like dumping the contents
Of a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table.
Let the games begin!
Clue one, and the biggest piece so far: 
My bird feeders have been emptied overnight
For the past week or so.  Especially the suet.
If I was a bear, the feeder food seems like an open invitation.
Midnight snack, come and get it!
Rendered fat and sunflower seeds, so tempting!
For several days I have been secretly accusing raccoons
Those midnight ramblers
Those masked banditos
So maybe they can be on my suspect list.
But how could they reach the suet, strung from a cable
Hung from a high branch?
About six feet off the ground?
I thought I was clever
Until recently.
But now the bear has been placed in the suspect lineup.
Excuse me, number 4, Mr. Black Bear,
Would you mind standing on your hind feet
And reaching up?
Ah! See?
Mr. Bear could reach the suet, for sure!
But how to prove it,
Where’s the evidence?
No witnesses
No tracks on the ground
No hair or scat.
I needed to catch him in the act.
“What you need is one of those infrared trail cameras
Like hunters use,” my friend Karen suggested.
Hmmm.  Maybe, just maybe.  
They have used those to take all the crystal clear
Photos that we’ve seen of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, right?
Right?
So off to Amazon Prime I go.
All hail Amazon for the work they do
In supporting our dreams and nightmares
Of monsters and mythical creatures
And maybe even bears in our backyards.
So my trail camera is on its way, shipped one day
And tomorrow night
When the moon is low, I’ll know:
Do black bears still roam
Sucking suet feeders dry?
And stirring my imagination?
While giving me more than a moment pause
To puzzle and ponder and wonder wild.
Tomorrow after dark, I may know.