Lessons in Colorado living-1

There's a reason people wait until morning to put their trash out.

In our Princeton neighborhood you were a slacker if you didn't have your garbage cans at the curb by dinnertime the night before pickup. Indeed, if you didn't get them out the night before you were likely to miss the truck, which could come as early as 5:30am. So having learned over the last two years to be good citizens who don't disturb the neighbors by rolling cans to the street at either midnight or 5am, here in our new Colorado neighborhood we dutifully took our trash to the curb at twilight the night before pickup. We noticed no one else had theirs out yet but imagined they would be putting it out soon.

At midnight I was headed to bed and glanced out the front window to see that our garbage can was lying open in the street, the contents seemingly spilled about. My first thought was that it was an obnoxious teen prank. Then Tom and I went out to pick up the mess and determined that the bags had been shredded and the contents mauled. On talking to the neighbors the next morning we confirmed that we'd almost surely had a run-in with a black bear.

Lesson learned: In Princeton a good citizen puts out the trash the night before pickup, so as not to offend the neighbors' ears by dragging it down the driveway at the crack of dawn. In Colorado a good citizen puts out the trash at the crack of dawn, so as not to offend the neighbors' eyes and noses with a display of dirty diapers strewn across the lawn.

Never mind how they might feel if they ran into the bear you were treating to a midnight snack.