Impromptu Nature Study (or, bears!)

(Note:  There's an update at the bottom)

This morning my husband spotted these tracks on the road just up from our house.

Do you recognize those?

And then while we were finishing dinner, my husband happened to look out the window and spotted this guy!

 And if you look closely you can see two in this picture...

And if you look very closely you can see three in this picture...  There was actually a mother and three cubs, but we couldn't get them all in one photo.

Pretty remarkable, don't you think?

Ah, the wonders of life in the country!  And also the reason why we no longer keep chickens.  Did you know that bears eat chickens?  And they are just about impossible to keep out of anything, once they decide they want into it.  Thankfully the bears around here are bashful enough not to try to go into houses, and we no longer have much of anything outside they are all that interested in getting into.

Updated to add:  My two year old spotted them again this morning, when looking out an upstairs window.  They saw all four again, but only briefly.  Yesterday evening, we took a tour around the garden and noticed they had knocked down part of the nylon fencing, loosened a post, and torn open our green cone.  The top on that is broken, but the fence was easily tacked back up.  The post will need a little more work, but should be mendable.  They didn't try to get into the garden today, so we think they didn't get much out of the green cone.