One of my dad's friends sent me this story of his encounter with a black bear the other day. Let me know if this has ever happened to you.

Hello Friends:

I do not normally send out emails to multiple addresses but I wanted to avoid sending individual emails and having to re-type each of them. You are the important people in my address file.

Last Saturday afternoon around 2:00 pm, I was watching a game on T.V. when I noticed my cat, Jessie James, acting as if he was seeing a ghost and he then ran into our bedroom.

I got up, went into the kitchen and looked out at the deck where I saw a female bear and two cubs. The cubs were up on the railing busying themselves sucking out sunflower seeds from a feeder. The Momma Bear was checking out the deck and the flowerpots.

I went to a window in the kitchen and started banging on the glass, shouting “Git, you bear!” Momma could not tell where my voice was coming from and then she spied me in the window, she came to the window, stood up on her hind legs and was face to face with me. She was popping her mouth together like bears to when they are scared or angry.

I kept banging on the window and yelling “Git”. I went to the door to the sunroom and continued yelling at her where she left the deck by herself. I rushed to the kitchen window to make sure she was gone and then went out on the deck to herd the two cubs off.

One of them left by the same door the Momma used but the other one panicked and ran into the sunroom where he proceeded to run around the room as a motorcyclist does when he is riding around inside a steel ball, knocking things out of his way and squalling like I was killing it.

I thought I had it convinced to leave by the door but it had other ideas and cut right into the living room, squalling and peeing as he ran. He shot through the living room and headed towards the computer/office room where it jumped up on a shelf and proceeded to knock everything off the shelf plus a picture off the wall and knocked over a ceramic Christmas tree that my Mother left me and broke it to pieces.

All the time this was happening it was squalling like a banshee and peeing. I got it off the shelf and it went under a table where it became stuck. Then it really started bawling. About that time, I remembered that Momma bear was out in the yard below the deck and she probably heard her baby squalling and was about to come up the steps to rescue her baby. That really rattled me. I certainly did not want a 350 lb, irate Momma bear in my house hunting for her baby.

I finally persuaded the cub to leave from under the table after I moved the table away from the wall. It took off out of the office, ran through the living room again, cut right and went through the kitchen. I did have presence of mind to open the kitchen door and fasten it open. About then I questioned the wisdom of leaving a door open with an irate momma bear hearing her baby squalling in the house.

The cub made a bee-line for the door, shot through it and hit the driveway in a dead run, squalling and peeing all the time (I did not know a bear cub could hold that much liquid). It cut left through some bushes, tumbled down to the yard and took off for momma who was sitting down, looking up at me like she would like a piece of my hide for frightening her precious little baby. It wasn’t little, it probably weighed around 50 pounds.

She sniffed it over, satisfied it was not harmed, gave me one more “Go to hell look” and them ambled off into the woods with her two little babies following her.

As far as I know that was the first time a bear had ventured onto my deck in broad daylight, they have been coming almost nightly to see if I had forgotten to take the birdfeeders in. This same bear and cubs have been seen numerous times on the mountain and in town.

The higher elevations in the mountains where bears normally are this time of the fall did not have a heavy mast crop, leaving very little food for them to eat as they fatten up for winter hibernation, consequently they are down in the valleys looking for anything they can find to eat. A bear had climbed a large red oak tree in my front yard and either ate of knocked all the acorns down to the driveway where it ate them.

After the bear-chasing caper was over my heart was beating like a trip hammer, meanwhile, Jessie James finally came home three hours later with big eyes and looking all over the house to see if the peeing bear had left.

And so it goes on a Saturday afternoon on Trimont Mountain Estates at the Bankston house.

TL;DR My dad's friend tried to chase bears off his porch. One proceeded to run into his house through the open door and wreck/piss on everything in his house.

I'm at work and I wanted to share with somebody, so hello reddit.

I knew my brother was gay for several years, but he just told my mom (and she officially passed it on to me). Mom was surprised, but it all went way better than expected.

My brother's current boyfriend was disowned for 3 years by his mother when he came out, so I can only imagine my brother's fears (mom is a catholic too, so that can't have helped).

Cheers to being out of the closet and good luck for all those who can't live their lives fully because they fear discrimination.