A Bayor!

It's the guy family reunion. 

As usual, we have too much to eat, some Balderdash, card playing and general merriment. 

Last night there was a little twist.

15 of us were at the dining room table yakking it up and finishing dessert and we had a little one upstairs asleep for the night by himself. All of a sudden the youngest at the table said loudly "BEAR" and we turned around. There was a very large bear (locally known as Brutus) heading up the stairs to the dining room. For one beat each of us thought it was a joke. And then we realized it wasn't and split.

mrguy grabbed our elderly cousin and carried her down the stairs to the deck. One nephew grabbed the mama and got her into the den. We, the daughters, all gravitated toward the mama and barricaded ourselves behind a piece of furniture in the den. By then the bear was in the living room trying to figure out how to leave. Everybody on the other side of the table from me ran outside and closed the door.

But there was a bear trapped in the house and a three-year-old sleeping by himself upstairs. My neph, the father, scaled the outside of the house with my brother-in-law quickly behind and got in via the balcony. They arrived just as the bear was retreating from the second floor (where he visited my sister's bathroom). One of the men barricaded himself in with his little one. The other grabbed a piano bench and brandished it at the bear. The bear went downstairs, back through the dining room, into a back bedroom and broke a window to exit. The caretaker shot rubber bullets into the air to scare him off.

It's going to be a bad day for the bear when he's trapped. There's a giant device there for bear catching, larded with sweet rolls.

A few shots from after the incident:

Mrguy's chair. I was in the folding chair next to him. At first the bear was scratching at the window below, but quickly turned around and walked up the stairs.

The bear was too big to exit via that tiny window, and there are gouges in the paneling underneath. He kinda wrecked things all over the house while trying to get out. 

He entered via the door below, and tried to exit that way but wasn't successful. He dragged a Costco pie out onto the drive and ate it there, along with the gigantic platter of spaghetti left over from the other night.

He is apparently not a coffee drinker. That would have been a real tragedy if he had eaten the coffee.

During his visit he took a poo on the ugliest chair in the house.

And he eventually blasted out the mama's bedroom window (now boarded up).

The next day we are *still* talking about it. So's everyone else in town, apparently. Our 7-year-old grandnephew will have the story of his lifetime, about how he saved his entire family. Could not be prouder of him and of each of us.