Late afternoon caller

The black bear lay on its belly gently eating every black sunflower seed from the still-intact bird feeder now on the ground. The bear was bedeviled by mosquitoes, and I watched it scratch an ear with a hind foot. I spoke to it, not ten feet away, through the screen door. The bear looked in my direction but did not appear bothered in the least by the sound of my voice. It wore a leather looking radio collar around its neck and both of its ears were tagged in blue. I wondered what that meant for him or her socially. When the bear had finished eating, it sniffed the air and took a leisurely drink from the basin of a birdbath I keep on the ground for chipmunks and other low-to-the-ground types of critters. Then it walked directly through my little patch of newly sprouted wild flowers, around to the front of the house, down the driveway, across the street and into my neighbor's yard. The bear's pace was slow and seemingly untroubled. It emitted an air of habituation to the human milieu.