Does a Bear S**t in the Woods?

Does a bear s**t in the woods? Apparently not. This morning my neighbor reports a big pile of doo-doo in her driveway.

We have all learned from our forester neighbor to pick scat apart with a stick to see what the critter was eating. At first glance, we might guess Thanksgiving dinner. (Just kidding!)

The clue you can't see is that this pile of scat is about 100 feet from the dumpster shared by 10 households. The 2 dumpster divers on our private road keep begging people to wash out their food containers, and, please, don't put food-infused paper (e.g., pizza boxes or used microwave paper towels) in the recycling dumpster, which sits right beside our trash dumpster.

A fed bear is a dead bear, because a fed bear becomes a nuisance to the neighborhood, and then....

The bear is trolling her usual food sources (including our dumpsters), just like we shoppers troll our favorite stores, the places where, in the past, we found something that we like.

Unfortunately, our mind trolls our problems, turning them over and over and over and ..... Even if they are a pile of s**t.  Er, "scat," i mean.

As one Tibetan teacher says, "Have a good time with your bad time."

Eventually, we do realize that whatever s**t we are putting up with, it's just not worth it.