I woke up this morning from disturbing dreams of bears lumbering through the forest outside my window. I felt badly rested, troubled, and then I remembered.
Last night, at midnight, I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of a door banging loudly. I felt my heart race. I reached out for my husband in the dark to see if he was still next to me.
"What was that?" I said, feeling like I should maybe be whispering.
"I don't know." he replied, getting out of bed and turing on the light.
I could imagine the doors, deadbolts unlocked, in our tiny new house. Because we live in the woods, we aren't very vigilant about locking up at night. I started to become frightened.
"Are you going to get up and see?" I asked, feeling a little guilty for making the man of the house do the scary stuff.
He shot me a look and went to get a flashlight. Meanwhile, I went to the living room and checked to see if everything was still there. It seemed to be. Trembling slightly, I looked in the shower, in the other room, in the kitchen, and turned on the back porch light. All I could see was our little patio table and the trees just beyond.
"Hon, get the phone." My husband said this tentatively, like he wasn't quite sure why. He had gone back to the basement entrance, just past our front door. Going around in my head was the image of our bikes in the basement, the date of our rental insurance expiration (last week), and the financial trouble we were potentially going to be in if our bikes were gone.
"Do you want me to call 911?" I called out.
"I don't know. The door to the basement is wide open."
I called 911.
The dispatcher was calm, told me to stay inside and not put myself in any danger. I said that our basement had been broken into, either by a burglar or a bear, and we weren't sure if he was still inside. I could see Andy's tiny flashlight lighting up the trees, first here, than there, as he looked around.
"Andy, come inside. The dispatcher says that we should wait inside for the sheriff."
"Our bikes are just open, hon; I'm going down there."
Just as he said that, the sheriff pulled up. At night, they drive huge SUVs with flood lights, and carry powerful flashlights. The light pierced the darkness and the reassuring greeting of the law officer was a relief. He examined the door, showing us scratch marks, and said that bears will break in for an old energy bar in a backpack.
"I just came from the West Shore, where a bear had smelled a lollipop and broke in to a little girl's room. He got the sucker. Not the girl. If you have any food at all in there, that's what he wanted. These bears are looking for warm places to sleep, not in the trees." With that, he took his powerful flood light into the woods behind the house.
"I can hear him rustling around there. I'm heading up." After a few minutes, he called out "Looks like he broke into your neighbor's shed. Ripped off the door of that too."
Eventually, he came back to our house, advised us to nail the ripped off door shut, and said he heard the bear go up the hill behind us, and was going to go check it out. His huge vehicle and bright lights pulled away, leaving me scared and shaken.
Andy started pulling nails from the basement walls and I grabbed a cable lock to put around the bikes. We found some plywood under the patio and started nailing it up. This was maybe the scariest part, because without the comforting lights of the sheriff, it was very dark. Our small flashlight completely failed to penetrate the dark trees surrounding our house, and although I could see the sheriff one street over, slowly heading up the hill, I felt vulnerable and scared. The scratch marks on the door seemed to grow in my head as I held up the plywood, and every hit of the hammer rang out piercingly loud in the night silence.
When we came back inside, we were both pale and wide eyed. Somehow, after a cup of mint tea, I finally fell asleep to troubling dreams.
