This black bear must have had a lot of scratching to do after he crawled out of hibernation. We approached him, as he walked towards us down the Klondike Hwy yesterday. He comes to the guardrail, and I’m thinking he’ll crawl over it and run into the bushes. But no, there was some serious scratching to be done. First, he rubs his under belly on the guardrail, then he backs up against the stake for a back scratch. Still not satisfied, he backs into a small tree, grabs the tip of the tree in his paw, pulling the tree against him and commences to using prickly pine needles to scratch with!
All this, before he finally stopped to dine on newly sprouted greens, growing along the shoulder of the road.
The bears are out!
We approached the bear, while driving in our van, of course!